


Coherent states

by theremin



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: High School, M/M, Science Fiction, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:12:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24809821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theremin/pseuds/theremin
Summary: Pied Piper ventures into quantum computing, and an accident hurtles Richard back to 2004.Content warning: contains Reagan-bashing, Maroon 5-phobia, and truly terrible quasi-science.
Relationships: Jared Dunn/Richard Hendricks
Comments: 26
Kudos: 52





	Coherent states

"Wow," Richard said, and he meant it. The massive metallic structure was placed in a hangar-like space and was made up of two conjoined black cylinders that gave off a muted hum. He grinned. A few years ago he'd been in Erlich's incubator, hashing out the bones of the Pied Piper algorithm in order to make his crappy music search faster, and now he was in Switzerland, where his invention would potentially help solve amazing mysteries, maybe contact alien life, or create some of the most amazing technology the world had ever seen.

"I'll take your picture, if you want," dr Fleischer said.

Richard giggled. "Guess that's uh, everyone's first question huh."

"Yes, even Stephen Hawking asked."

Richard handed her his phone, stood in front of the Fermionic Stabilizer and smiled. She snapped his photo and gave the phone back to him. Just then, it chimed with a message from Jared. He'd been pretty unsubtle about wanting to come on this trip but Richard had had to put his foot down. Jared was a great COO, but it was becoming increasingly obvious what Richard had once identified as a passion for Pied Piper was more... a passion for Pied Piper's CEO. Or well, not passion, maybe, but Richard had actually started going to therapy and they'd talked a good bit about Jared and the theory Richard felt most comfortable with was that Richard had become a substitute for the family Jared didn't have. Whatever the fuck it was Jared was the happiest whenever he got to work closely with Richard so Richard had made some subtle changes, got him the office next to his, had lunch with him most days, let him get him teas and coffees - it was kind of embarrassing, but it made him happy, so whatever, right? Mark Zuckerberg once spent a year killing defenseless farm animals because he decided he'd only eat meat he'd killed himself, on the scale of weirdo tech CEO behaviour Richard occasionally indulging his COO's butler kink barely fucking pinged. The wildest online theory that circulated about them was that they were lovers which was mortifying enough but still, like, far within the boundaries of normalcy. Might explain why his dating life sucked so bad though.

Either way, it was what it was and what it was worked - a month prior, Pied Piper had reached the billion dollar evaluation milestone - but both the CEO and the COO of a wildly successful tech company about to take the leap into quantum computing couldn't exactly both vacate the premises for a two week work trip at the same time, so Richard hadn't let him come along to this. He'd make it up to him. He was giving a guest lecture at a university in Rome later that year, that would only be a couple of days, he could come along to that and they'd, like, eat some fucking spaghetti and uh ride a gondola or whatever they did in Italy.

 _How are you Richard! Did you get to see it yet?_ the message asked. Richard looked apologetically up at dr Fleischer, a tall, rangy woman with severe glasses. His fingers swiped quickly over the glass of his phone, and he sent Jared the photo she'd just taken of him with the Fermionic Stabilizer.

_I'm here right now :) call you when I get back to the hotel_

__

__

_Absolutely magnificent!_ the reply came immediately, which was followed up by _And so is that thing in the background ;-)_

Richard frowned at his phone, put it away.

"Um, sorry about that, doctor. I uh, yeah, can I have the tour?"

She started walking briskly, her blocky heels making clack-clack noises against the metal of the floor, her voice echoing in the space. "As you probably know, this project is in its tenth year. We have made some incredible scientific advances."

"Yeah, uh, I know," Richard said. "I've been following you from the start. Is there like any off the record stuff you can tell me? Like... um..."

"Aliens?" She smiled a little.

"Yeahhh like... like that."

"Nothing to report," she said, and then, with a little twinkle in her eye. "yet. With the implementation of Pied Piper's algorithm we should be able to gain five, maybe seven years' progress in a day. Theoretically, of course."

"That's uh, wow," Richard said.

"The potential of the Fermionic Stabilizer is still largely unknown, but the advances we've seen in the last few years has really given me faith we have built something that will immensely benefit human kind. We just need to figure out how. We have the solution," she gestured towards it. "but not the equation."

"And they're implementing the algorithm today, right?"

"As we speak."

A melody started playing, and the doctor got her phone out. She squinted at it. "This looks important. Do excuse me." She tapped her phone. "Hello?" There was a pause, and her face took on a very stern and serious quality. "I'll be right there." She hung up, then looked at Richard. "I'm terribly sorry, mister Hendricks. I am needed in the control room."

"Is there- is there an issue with the algorithm, should, should I-"

"Perhaps you could just wait here for the time being?"

"Can I?"

"Yes. Just make sure not to touch anything. I'll be right down, and if I get caught up I'll send someone to take care of you."

"Um, okay," Richard said, confused, but secretly a little thrilled to be allowed to be alone with human kind's most insanely impressive piece of technology yet. Well, potentially. He looked up at it, felt in awe, like a peasant entering a medieval European church. He looked around. There weren't any other workers in sight, nobody really worked hands on with the machine, it was all done from various control rooms. He walked closer to it, a little reverently. It was the blackest black he'd seen in his life. It hummed low and steady, almost like a song. He couldn't resist. Nobody would ever know, right? He reached out a hand and gently let his fingers brush over its surface. It was neither warm nor cold, and smoother than he'd expected, more like glass than metal- then something happened. The hum started and stopped and became more of a murmur, and the machine started to glow an odd purple.

"Oh, ah, fuck," Richard Hendricks said, looked wildly around for somebody to help, but there wasn’t anyone. He reached for his phone to call dr Fleischer and gasped when he realized he could see through his own hand. Before he could scream, Richard Hendricks ceased to be.

*

Richard opened his eyes.

Holy shit, what a fucking nightmare! What in the Event Horizon _fuck!_ His heart was pounding hard. He looked around. Where was he? It was dark. God, the hotel in Chur, right? Uh? He reached out for a light switch and empty cans clattered to the floor. What the fuck? Had he been drinking? Alone? Well, that explained some things. His hand finally found something that felt like a lamp and Richard flooded a small ish room with light. An intensely familiar room. A room with Britney Spears smiling coquettishly from a poster on the closet door. A room with a heavy, oatmeal-coloured computer on a brown wooden desk. A room with stacks and stacks of books and comics. A room absolutely booby trapped with energy drinks, which was what the cans he'd knocked over were.

His room. Back in Tulsa.

Except his room didn't look like this anymore. His mom wasn't the kind of weird movie mom that kept her children's rooms as pristine museums dedicated to their youth. The second he moved out she'd put in a light blue sleeper couch and turned it into a hobby room.

He had to be dreaming. He was still dreaming. That was the only explanation. There was some shitty werewolf movie he'd seen once where the main character woke up in ever new nightmares and even though the movie had overall kind of sucked that bit had stuck with him. There were like three or four false starts there. He was just on number one. He'd be okay. He closed his eyes hard, pinched his arm. An alarm went off. The alarm that had kicked his ass out of bed for four excruciatingly long years of high school. Reflexively, not even looking, he punched out a hand to turn it off. He shut his eyes again, pinched his arm again. Any minute now. He'd wake up any minute. In Switzerland. Or Palo Alto. Wherever.

A door opened, but Richard kept his eyes closed. If this was anything like that movie, it’d be nazi werewolves.

"Richard, get up."

He opened his eyes, and stared up into the face of his mother. Younger. More harried looking. Thinner. His mother. She clapped her hands.

"Up up up! Go go go!"

Richard grabbed the wooden frame of his bed, eyes still fixed on her face. She frowned a little.

"Something wrong, baby?"

Richard threw up.

*

The door closed downstairs, and Richard, off school "sick", jumped out of bed. Both his parents had now left for work, and he had the house to himself. While he clung on to the hope he was just dreaming in a terrifyingly realistic way (or that he was in a fucking coma somewhere, or literally dead, although he wasn't exactly hoping for that), he also accepted the possibility this fuckshit was... real. The Fermionic Stabilizer had gigantically untapped potential and Richard had read enough about quantum physics to know that the possibilities were staggering. 

After checking the date on the clunky old CNN website - May 24th, 2004 - he went into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. God, he looked like a blastocyst. With an unruly halo of reddish curls. He desperately needed a haircut, why had he thought going outside like this was okay? He grabbed some cereal and just spent some time wandering around the house, staring. Then he decided to go on a bike ride, see the neighbourhood. So he went into the garage, grabbed his bike - his old bike! - and started riding. The streets looked just like he remembered. It was nuts.

He had to think. If this was real. What the fuck was he going to do. Live through high school again? Jesus fuck! Become a modern day Cassandra? Assassinate Donald Trump and Mark Zuckerberg? He suddenly wished he'd finished that stupid Stephen King book about the dude who went back in time and tried to prevent the assassination of Kennedy. It was just so long though. He'd only got to the bit where he befriended Lee Harvey Oswald. Either way, prison didn't tempt. Play the stock market, buy zoom shares? With what fucking money? He had to think of a way to get out of this. It was the mid-noughties, not the fucking seventies, there was broadband internet and he had a gaming computer he had modded to fuck himself plus a clunky laptop, and he wasn't really Richie Hendricks, sixteen and a half, he was CEO Richard Hendricks, 32, with all of his knowledge and experience. He'd done the impossible before. He'd do it again. The breeze hit his face and he felt weirdly excited in a way. Well, why shouldn’t he? He was, possibly, the first ever time traveller in human history! Apart from being terrifying, this was completely fucking amazing.

A car slowed beside him and honked. Richard looked over, then he stared. It was mr Harris, his fucking PE teacher, the terror of his teen years. He had actually wanted to see the guy again, but only to rub the whole billion dollar evaluation in his face, not like this! 

"Why aren't you in school, Hendricks?"

"Um, none of your business?" Richard said. "I don't have time for this, sorry."

"Get off that bike right now!"

Richard started to slow, then frowned. You know what? Fuck this. If he was going to do this shit all over again, he'd do it right this time. Adults sucked and knew nothing and had no real authority. He should know, he was one. He sped up, pedalled as hard as he could. He grinned. He heard the car speed up behind him. What, was the guy insane? He looked over his shoulder, and then mr Harris had caught up to him.

"I'm going to give you one chance to stop," he shouted out the car window.

"Fuck you," Richard said, pedalled harder. He rode off the road and onto a dirt track. He heard the car stop. One fucking nil to Richard- he looked over his shoulder and- that motherfucker was running after him like the fucking Terminator? Jesus Christ? Well, he was on a bike and that guy was just on his legs and- even though Richard was younger he wasn't really any fitter and whew he had been pedalling real fucking hard and his legs were going stiff- he felt a hand on his shoulder, lost his balance with surprise and skidded to the ground.

Bruised, scraped and dusty with mr Harris' big stupid paw on his shoulder he was delivered to ms Green's English class twenty minutes later. He felt like he might throw up again, seeing the gormless teenage faces of his old classmates - but then he smiled. There was Big Head. Teenage Big Head, even shorter, with way more hair and acne than Richard remembered, sitting alone at their shared desk. Richard beelined for him.

"Hey, man!"

"Richard, isn't it bad enough you've disrupted my class if you're not going to talk to your friends as well?" ms Green chided. He felt a little small. He'd liked her.

"Sorry," he muttered. 

Big Head, noticing he didn't have any books with him, slid his over and they looked together. If it wasn't so horrifyingly surreal and bizarre it would be kind of cute. Big Head looked adorable! Like a fucking... Animal Crossing villager or something. He was so small and fresh-faced.

"What the hell happened to you?" Big Head asked when class was over. "You look like you lost a fight with a hedge."

"Um, I woke up and felt sick, so I wasn't gonna come in, but then I felt like better, so I took my bike out, and I ran into mr Harris. I tried to bike away from him but he ran after me like a- like a god damn robot-"

"For real?"

"Yeah," Richard said, then a little proudly, "I told him to go fuck himself."

Big Head guffawed.

*

After a long, tortuous day at school Richard trudged back home, walking his bike beside him. He was both tired and wired and utterly weirded out. The computers at school were like... really slow? He didn't remember them being that slow. And some of the boneheads at school had called him a faggot and while he didn't get all freaked out and upset about it like he used to, which seemed to throw them, he felt depressed about it. Man, high school truly had sucked, he suddenly remembered exactly why he spent most of those years coding and gaming and not partying and having "fun" like people seemed to be under the delusion you should as a teen. 

“I’m back,” he said when he walked in, an old habit he’d forgotten kicking in. His mom walked over with a stern face.

“Bill Harris called me earlier. What on earth do you think you’re doing?”

“What?” Richard asked. He couldn’t get over how young she looked. She was kind of beautiful, actually. Or as beautiful as a woman who really looked like him could be.

“Well first you leave the house when you’re supposed to be off sick, and then you don’t stop when your teacher asks you to, and then you throw him an F bomb??”

Richard shrugged, walked over to the fridge and got some lemonade out, took a long sip.

“Wow, this is super good.”

“Richard!” 

“What do you want me to say? The dude is a fucking nazi, he shouldn’t be allowed around children.”

“Oh you’re a child, are you?”

“I’m sixteen, what would you call me?”

“A smart alec, is what I would call you. Go up to your room, git.”

Richard made a face. “Are you for real? Up to my room with no dinner?”

“Well, if you’re a child, you get a child’s punishment.”

Richard grinned. This was fucking ridiculous. He walked over, put his arms around his mother and hugged her. She froze for a moment, then her arms came up around him, too.

“I love you,” he said, heard his voice go high. It had been more than a year since the last time he visited her, even though she kept inviting him. He was just so busy. “sorry you got such a shitty, weird son. You deserve better.”

“Hey,” she said in a surprised voice. “you know what I do to people who talk trash about my wonderful, handsome son?”

“What?”

She pulled out of the hug, stroked his arms. “I kick their butts. So watch yourself. But you’re not charming your way out of his one, mister. Upstairs.”

“Okay.”

He went up in his bedroom, sighed, got down on his knees and pulled his all nighter stash out from under his bed. Energy drinks, luna bars, a one third full bag of chips. God, he’d really been a pig. Chewing on a bar he laid down on his back. He could not do this. He had to go back. It wasn't like the future didn't full on suck, in a way it would be better to just stay here in 2004, but not like... as a kid! At least in the future he had a penthouse apartment and an amazing job and more than one friend to his fucking name! At least he could get dudes like mr Harris fucking arrested if they harrassed him! He could afford to get them killed, he thought, and smiled.

He reached over for his CD player and pressed play, wondering if there was anything inside. Kid A started playing and he grinned. Fuck to the yes. He got up, grabbed a notebook, and started writing. There had to be a way out. There just had to be.

An hour later he had some pages full of ideas and the beginnings of formulas, but it really was kind of hopeless. The tech he needed was more than fifteen years into the future. What was he going to do with a gaming PC and a fucking Nokia? In Tulsa? If only he had someone to talk to. What, he was gonna tell his mom and dad he was a fucking time traveller from the future? Big Head? Even if they believed him, which was pretty much a non existent possibility, how could they possibly help? No, he needed someone really smart and thoughtful and open minded who would just hear him out. If only he had Doc fucking Brown.

If only he had Jared.

He suddenly missed him then, so much it physically hurt. Legit they wouldn't meet for another decade, fuck. Jared was only a year or so older than him, so he'd be in his senior year, probably working in a fish gutting factory in his spare time and only being allowed toe nails for meals if his stories were anything to go-

Richard sat up from where he'd been lounging over his notebook. Jared. Was out there. Younger, but still Jared. If he could find him, he could talk to him. Talking to Jared always helped.

Richard ran over to his computer and started it up, and swore as it took one and a half minutes to finish loading. He stayed up half the night searching for Donald Dunn (he'd wasted half an hour searching for Jared Dunn before realizing his mistake). There was not a whole lot of shit out there. As much as Richard loathed social media, it would have been useful right about now. 

In lieu of that he conscientiously noted down any sign of a mention that could be Jared. A signature to save some wetlands in Arkansas on an online petition. A mention of a third prize win in a short story competition for disadvantaged teens. Some chirpy comments on a message board for birders where almost everybody used their real name. In 2004? Probably populated by olds. He clicked the sign that allowed him to read all posts by user DonaldDunn.

_I find the cormorant to be so distinguished :-)_

_Was lucky enough to catch these babies peeking their heads out today! Soon they'll be ready to fly!_

_What does everyone like to bring on birding expeditions, beveragewise? Nothing beats a flask of lemony tea, for me!_

_I recently moved to McKing and I'm excited to check out the birding possibilities by the lake :-)_

Wait- what? Not McKing as in the podunk town an hour and a half away? He opened Google Maps, which was a real piece of shit, it had like street view of eight cities, but whatever. McKing, Oklahoma? He opened the website for McKing High School and cracked his knuckles. Let's see if he could still remember how to do this.

Within fifteen minutes he had root access and could view a document - a fucking spreadsheet, jesus - of all students currently enrolled in school and their classes. Donald Dunn, senior year, transferred two months prior. Richard cross checked the date with the post on the forum. It matched. The document also had his address and Richard noted it down with the rest of the info. Had to be him, right? It really was insanely lucky he was in the same state, but how many poor suckers of that age and field of interests walked around with the unfortunate name of Donald Dunn? He frowned. If it was him, how come he'd never mentioned that to Richard? He could practically hear him invent the word "state-mates". And how the hell was he supposed to go about meeting him?

He chewed his lip. Could it be that easy? He added a row to the spreadsheet under Jared's name and typed. Hendricks, Richard. Transferred May 25th 2004. He subtracted a year from his date of birth. He'd be able to commute to McKing. His granddad was cool about letting him use his old car as long as he filled up the tank. Richard stared. Fuck. He'd get to meet his granddad again. He'd passed nearly ten years prior. He looked at the time. Jesus. Three in the morning. If this was going to work, he needed to get some sleep in.

*

Richard punched his arm out to silence the alarm clock from hell, wrapped the covers over his head. He heard the sound of a door opening.

"Richard? How are you feeling?"

"Okay," he said.

"Ready for school?"

"Yeah, yeah."

"Breakfast is waiting."

When he trudged downstairs stacks of pancakes with maple syrup and fresh blueberries were waiting for him. He grinned at his mom. Someone was feeling guilty about the whole, no dinner the night before thing. 

"Oh hush," she said, even though he hadn't said anything.

He walked over to her and hugged her, and then walked over to his dad who was sitting at the table, reading a newspaper, and hugged him too. He gave him a surprised pat on the arm. "Sure you're not sick?" he asked.

"I'm fine, dad."

He sat down and took a big bite out of his stack, chewed blissfully. Fuck, this was good.

"Um, so, I might be kinda late home tonight."

"Where are you going?"

"Big Head's," Richard lied.

"You eating there?"

"Yup," Richard said. It was believable enough, he used to love Theresa Bighetti's cooking, and be fascinated by the movement of her heavy breasts in those flowy tops. He only let Big Head in on that first thing.

"Okay, honey."

So they said their goodbyes and Richard set off on his bike - and then took a turn to bike over to his granddad's farm. It was a good half hour ride, but fortunately no fascist PE teachers body slammed him, so it was actually mostly just a really pleasant ride. Everything smelled good. He could even love the smell of manure. It was a sign summer was coming.

He skidded to a halt outside the farm. A man in overalls looked up from what he was doing in the yard and waved at him. Richard grinned, waved back, and then, uncontrollably, his eyes filled with tears.

"What's wrong son?" his granddad - his pawpaw - asked in a concerned tone of voice and Richard couldn't answer, just held on to the old man and sobbed.

A little while later they were in pawpaw's sunny kitchen, sharing a jug of lemonade.

"You know I don't approve of cutting class," the old man said with a twinkle in his eye. He'd constantly encouraged Straight A Richard to be a little more naughty, cause a little mischief.

"Might cut for a few days. Don't tell mom, okay?"

"Well, if we got a secret, we got a secret. That's a sacred bond."

"Um, actually, can I like, use the Dodge? During the day? I'm uh, I'm going to uh, I'm gonna go see someone."

Pawpaw grinned, his wrinkled face crinkling up even more behind his white beard. "You can. On one condition."

"I know, I know, fill er up."

"That goes without saying. My condition is that you fill _me_ in on some _details._ "

Richard sighed. "Gonna go see a friend."

"What kind of friend?"

Richard smiled weirdly. "Um. A really... like..."

"A girlfriend?"

"No," Richard said. He took a deep breath. "a guy friend. But uh. He's special."

"Oh," pawpaw said.

"Yeahh. Uh."

He cleared his throat. "This isn't one of them stranger danger internet things, I hope?"

"No, jesus, we've met, we know each other. He's my age."

There was a silence. Richard had some more lemonade, felt a little like he might choke on it.

"You special to him, too?"

Richard laughed, a weird, relieved laugh. "Yeah." Putting it mildly.

Pawpaw raised his glass. "Well, let's drink to that. Course you can have the car."

*

So Richard drove out to McKing, listening to pawpaw's country music cassettes along the way. He used to think they were so lame but driving in his pawpaw's car, listening to his music, getting to spend some time with him... god, it was like he was shining from the inside with it all.

"Sometimes I don't know where this dirty road is taking me, sometimes I don't even know the reason why," Richard sang along nasally, the words coming to him from somewhere in his memory bank.

He pulled up outside McKing High School. He looked at the time. Eleven. Okay. He grabbed his backpack, went inside. Asked around and found an office.

"Hello, um, I'm Richard Hendricks, I start today," he said.

The woman in her fifties with a grey bun on her head and heavily made up eyes squinted at him. "You start today?"

"Yes ma'am, first day."

"Who starts school two weeks before senior year is over?"

He hadn't thought of that. He shrugged. "Guess I do."

"Nonsense," she muttered.

"I should uh, be in, the system," he said, pointing at her old ass computer. Even for 2004. It looked like a relic from the 90s.

"Let me check the data-base," she said. Richard scoffed. "what's that?"

"Um, nothing," Richard coughed. "dry throat."

After what seemed like thirty minutes, but was probably closer to ten, she'd managed to pull up the spreadsheet and found his name on it.

"Would you look at that," she said. "must have been that new girl did this. I really don't see the point, but I'm not going to turn a young man hungry for learning away." She squinted. "You're supposed to be in history class. It just started. Let me walk you over."

She walked him, excruciatingly slowly, over to a classroom and opened the door.

"This here's Richard Hendricks," she said. "he's starting today."

He saw the teacher and the receptionist exchange looks, but the teacher recovered quickly. "Well, welcome to you, Richard! There's a free seat next to Belinda there-"

Richard barely glanced at Belinda and her free seat. In the back of the class, tall and so very skinny, was Jared. Man, he'd always considered Jared skeletal but Jared in his thirties looked almost husky next to Jared at seventeen. His cheeks were hollow and his eyes looked so big. Jared looked up and Richard smiled at him. He expected Jared to smile warmly back, raise a hand a little shyly in greeting - but he just looked away, out of the window.

"I like sitting in back," Richard said, beelined for Jared. "this seat taken?"

Jared looked up at him surprised. He shook his head.

"Hey, I’m Richard," Richard said, stuck out a hand. Jared looked at it for a beat, then shook it weakly.

"Pleased to meet you, Richard. I'm Donald."

He sat down, grinned. He couldn't take his eyes off Jared. Seeing the young Big Head again had been really fun, but he really had been that chilled out undersized acne farm someone like the young Richard would have been able to befriend. Jared looked... Richard wasn't sure what the word was. Almost like, haunting? 

Apart from one zit on the right side of his forehead his skin was clear and very pale, his eyes had dark circles, his lips were a rosy pink. Big Edward Gorey vibes. Or Edgar Allan Poe. But like in a good way. He wore a grey knit sweater even though it was warm. It looked like it had been mended more than once.

Jared caught him looking, pointed at his book. "We're here," he whispered. 

"I didn't bring a history book," Richard whispered back. "can we share?"

"Okay."

Richard leaned in a little, Jared made room. He'd really forgotten about this weird little intimacy. 

When class was over, Jared gathered up his things and set off with a long awkward stride.

"Uh Juh- uh Donald, wait up." Richard got his things together as quick as he could.

Jared stopped, frowned. "What?"

"Like um, you wanna have lunch together?"

Richard smiled. Lunch with Jared. Almost like normal. But Jared shook his head.

"I don't eat in the cafeteria."

"What? Why not?"

"Can't afford it."

"Well where do you go?"

Jared looked a little pained. Something he'd said in a subpar cafe Richard had been complaining about came to the forefront of his mind. _Well it certainly beats eating lunch in a high school bathroom stall!_ He'd just brushed it off, hadn't he? 

"Um, well, even if you have a packed lunch you can still keep me company there, right? Please, man, I dont' even know where it is."

Jared shifted a little from foot to foot. "Okay," he said eventually. "if you like."

"Pick out a table," Richard said when they reached the grey, depressing looking cafeteria. "I'm just gonna go get some food."

He got a burger, extra fries, an apple and a Snickers bar. Jared sat alone, hunched over, at a table, quietly unpacking a modest looking lunch. Richard walked over, joined him. 

"Share these fries with me, dude. I got way too much."

"That's alright," Jared said.

"So uh, how did you-"

"Hey, new kid," some big dude with a buzz cut said, passing them. "watch out for Apeshit."

Jared, unperturbed, took a bite out of his cheese sandwich. 

"They uh- they call you that?"

Jared shrugged. "I may not look it, but I know how to fight."

Richard felt a pain in his chest at that. He'd never really- yeah, Jared had said all sorts of things about his past, but he'd just- never taken them super seriously really? Like, actually engaged with them? 

"In my school - my old school - they called me faggot," Richard said. Jared finally looked up from his food to look him in the eye.

"They did?"

"Yeah. I mean, amongst other things, but that was the most common." He started counting on his fingers. "Let's see. Bitchard. Dicksuck. Brain, as if that was an insult, guess it was to them. Nerd. Homo."

"Is that why you transferred?"

"No," Richard said. "not really. But like, isn't it wild? I know kids and adults aren't the same but when you think about it, the fact some of us legit have to show up somewhere we never signed up for every fucking day and get called names in the hallway by the dregs of humanity is literally crazy. We should have an HR department, at the very least."

"What's an HR department?"

"Seriously?"

Jared looked a little hurt.

"Um, Human Resources. It's a department you have in a workplace that deals with staff. They hire and fire but also make sure people are happy. If you have a conflict with a co-worker they can mediate and reprimand. If someone walked around calling people Apeshit in my co- uh- in my dad's company they'd be out on their fucking ass."

"I get why they call you Brain," Jared said.

Richard pushed his tray over. "Legit. Dude. I cannot eat all this."

Jared tilted his head a little, then reached out and gently grasped a few fries with long fingers.

Richard was pleased to see Jared ended up polishing up most of the fries and the apple, leaving most of his own lunch untouched, as Richard insisted the burger and chocolate bar was more than enough for him. The conversation was nice, but Jared was really different. Just, like, super guarded? It was weird, he was used to him being so open and transparent to the point of cringe, dealing with a polite, closed off version of him was just super bizarre. But then again, he didn't know Richard like Richard knew him. It would probably take a little time gaining his trust. And god, he had all the fucking time in the world.

At the end of the school day Richard caught up with him again in the hallway.

"Uh, so what are you up to, today?"

"What?"

"Like, you wanna hang out?" Richard smiled his warmest smile.

"No," Jared said.

What the hell. Maybe he hadn't been sent back in time, maybe he'd been sent to an alternate dimension. On what plane of existence would Jared refuse the offer to hang out with him? He was really weirdly hurt.

"Uh, okay, sorry. Forget I asked."

Jared stopped. "You seem really nice, Richard. But there's literally two weeks left of high school. A month until I turn eighteen. And then I'm never coming back to Oklahoma again." He shrugged. "I just have to make it through this last month and then I'm never thinking about anything that happened here ever again."

While he was talking, he'd scratched at his arm, absently dragging up the sleeve of his jumper. Richard looked at the movement and then frowned and realized his wrist was bruised nearly black. Jared noticed him looking and dragged the sleeve quickly down. 

"See you around," he said, and trudged off.

Richard felt terrible driving back to Tulsa. He'd gone after Jared in the hopes he would be able to help him. But in 2004, Jared clearly had more than enough with his own problems. But like... he knew that. Jared had told him. Why had he just treated those disconcerting asides like he was randomly reciting Struwwelpeter? Why hadn't he been a better friend? Because, Richard thought, for all he'd hated high school and couldn't wait to get away, he'd had a great mom and dad who loved him, a nice house with a yard, a twinkle-eyed pawpaw and a best friend. He'd never dealt with real darkness. He'd never dealt with- he remembered the bruises on Jared's arm - with fucking _evil._ He'd left because he wanted a different life, not for survival. He had no idea how to help or comfort or support someone who had, because he had no idea what they needed, because he didn't need those things himself. He pulled over at the side of the road, got a tissue out and wiped his eyes a little. It wasn't fair. Jared was literally the best person he knew. 

And maybe he didn't know it yet, but he had a friend. He cleared his throat, flipped through the cassettes. Linda Ronstadt, one of pawpaw's big favourites. Mawmaw used to act pretend-jealous when she came on the TV, when she was still around. Her version of "Willin" started playing through the car's crappy speakers.

"I've been from Tucson to Tucumcari, Tehachapi to Tonapah," Linda sang and Richard sang along, started the car back up. Maybe he hadn't been a great friend before, but he was going to be one now.

* * *

Weirdly, Richard found himself better liked at McKing High School than he'd ever been during his real high school years. He was, incredible as it might sound, far mellower than he'd been as a teen, which clearly worked in his favor. Neither did he feel the need to prove he was the smartest guy in the room in class. He just didn't care. And he wasn't scared of these deformed, tall children. The jocks didn't look like terrifying big guys to him anymore, they looked like dumb fuckin kids. Also, he guessed, he came across as a little mysterious, as he dodged questions about why he'd transferred so late in the school year, if he was going to take the final tests, whatever.

Whatever it was, the bullies left him alone, his new classmates tried talking to and including him (which Richard was wholly uninterested in, which weirdly seemed to make them try harder). Well, all his classmates except for Jared. Jared greeted him with a nod when he sat down next to him in the morning, and sat with him at lunch, but he firmly refused Richard's offers to share food and hang out, and he kept subjects strictly to school-related themes. Richard kept buying extra food though. His first day had been a Tuesday. On Wednesday Jared had so adamantly refused one of Richard's waffles he'd just gone, "Okay, geeze, suit yourself," frustrated, and walked away, his tray still on the table between them. Jared hadn't followed. But he'd looked over his shoulder and seen Jared carefully gathering up the leftovers in the paper bag he'd had his own lunch in. So he kind of just kept doing that.

That Wednesday, before driving back to Tulsa, he drove out to the address listed in Jared's contact information. He ended up on a road outside a tired-looking apartment complex. People who were obviously dealing drugs hung around. It made Richard feel depressed. What did he think he was going to find? He turned and drove back home.

By Friday Richard was getting desperate. What excuse did he have to hang around Jared when school was over? Also, should he like... should he take his own finals? They were next week back in Tulsa. Like, he needed those A's. That's how he got into Stanford, how he managed to get himself to Cali, how he met the dude that introduced him to Erlich. The philosophical ramifications of starting a life in a completely new direction were too vast and chaotic for him to really dare think about, so he decided on this: even though there had been many shitty years in his life he did like where he'd ended up in the future and he wanted that, so he needed everything to go as smoothly as possible, and hopefully he'd find a way back to the future sooner rather than later until it got like, impossible. The longer he stayed in the past, the more the path strayed from his previous trajectory. So he'd spent Thursday night studying up on local birds, and "borrowed" his dad's binoculars, he was going for the fucking jugular. If Jared could resist an offer to go birding by the lake he was definitely not Richard's Jared. He'd even bought a fucking box of lemon flavored tea. It was in the Dodge with a thermos, a blanket, some raisin cookies (literally disgusting but Richard knew they were his favourite), the binoculars and a library book on bird species. Like, all the things Jared Dunn would put in his sex dungeon. He just needed Jared to lighten the fuck up and for this fucking school day to be over.

"Hey, new kid."

Buzzcut from the first day - Richard didn't remember his name, didn't care - called out. Richard turned, raised an eyebrow.

"Come over, I wanna talk to you."

"I don't see what you and I have to discuss," Richard said. "pass."

He started walking inside school, wondered how he'd broach the bird thing with Jared. He heard footsteps approach behind him.

"I wanna ask you a question."

Richard sighed, turned, smiled. Buzzcut and two of his simple-looking pals had rocked up. "Fine. Biff Tannen. How can I help you."

"It's BRAD," Buzzcut said. "not Biff."

"Okay."

"Me and the boys were just wondering. Why do you try so hard to make friends with the retard?"

Richard scowled. "That's a pretty offensive word, you know. In a few years, nobody will use it."

The guys cracked up. "Ohh," Buzzcut said, then in a mocking voice, "what will be okay to say then? Special neeeeds?"

"Nah, just holding up your photo should do the job."

Richard smiled, pleased. It wasn't the best zinger in the world but at least he'd thought of it quickly. One of Buzzcut's friends even coughed to cover a laugh. Then Buzzcut made a fist with his hand and the world went black.

Richard blinked awake a few seconds later. He'd somehow ended up on his back, on the floor. He heard yelling.

"-him alone! You leave him the fuck alone, motherfucker! Wanna fill up a body bag?"

"Jesus christ Apeshit, chill out."

"Get the fuck out of here!"

"You want some of this too, retard?"

"Brad, don't, like, it's not worth it. He fights dirty. Remember Mike?"

Richard could hear the sound of steps retreating then, and then Jared's soft, worried voice.

"Richard? Richard?"

Richard looked up at him, crouching next to him.

"Hey," he said.

"Richard, how many fingers am I holding up?"

"Banana," Richard said. Then he smiled. "only joking. Just the three."

Jared actually laughed then, his high, familiar laugh. It was the first time he'd heard that sound in... way too long.

"Can you, can you stand up? Let's go to the bathroom."

Richard let Jared pull him up and he walked with him, a little unsteadily, into the bathrooms. He walked with a firm grip on Richard's arm and even though his nose throbbed and the back of his head hurt it just felt really good. Jared hustled him to stand against the sink, mom-like, and ran some water over a paper towel. He tilted Richard's chin up with long, nimble fingers and Richard let him.

"Will I live, doctor?" he asked.

"Stop joking," Jared said, but his tone was fond. If all he needed for Jared to come out of his shell was take a punch to the face he would have picked a fight earlier. Jared expertly dabbed away blood, then tilted Richard's face from one side to the other, inspecting, before he was satisfied the bleeding had stopped and nothing looked out of place.

"Thanks," Richard said.

"Don't mention it."

"I didn't think you cared."

Jared got that pained look again. "I couldn't let them do that to you."

"He sucker punched me," Richard said. "what a coward. And his goblin sidekick had the audacity to accuse you of fighting dirty."

"I do," Jared said. "if you go for places that take time to heal they think twice before they try to hit you again."

Richard thought about the bruises on Jared's arms. "I'm sorry that's something you need to know," he said. Jared looked genuinely surprised.

"I um- I heard your exchange with Brad. I'm curious too. Why do you try so hard to make friends with me?"

Richard shrugged. "You seem like the smartest person here." He noticed Jared's cheeks pink a little. Now or never. "Um, so uh, I still don't know my way around this town really, do you know the best way to get to the lake? I wanna go birding later today."

Jared's eyes turned saucer big.

* * *

"There, drive past the minimall, then take the right."

"Okay," Richard said. He glanced over at Jared in the passenger seat and smiled. Fucking finally. 

He hadn't even had to ask Jared to eat lunch with him that day, Jared had just waited for him to pack up his things and walked with him, asking him if he'd been into birding long, what his rarest sighting had been, what his favourite birds were. Richard was glad he'd read up a little. He'd never been able to find it in him to give the slightest fuck about this hobby (he could put up with "the outdoors" and "waiting" for astronomy but little else) and had never taken Jared up on any of his timid offers to come with him on any of his treks, which he felt a little bad about now. Would it have been so horrible to go hike for a couple of hours and look at some twittering, boring little animals if it made Jared happy? He certainly spent enough time patiently listening to Richard rant and rave about things that probably held zero interest to any other living human except Richard Hendricks. Well, in any case, Jared had offered to come with him to show him the way to the lake and the "best spots" and now here he was, in the Dodge, looking a little awkward, but still, here.

Richard turned the radio on. Maroon 5's "This Love" started blasting out of the shitty speakers.

"Aaargh!" Richard said. "I used to fucking hate this song."

"Do you like it now?" Jared asked.

"Huh?"

"You said you used to?"

Richard blushed. "Um! No, I mean, I was lucky enough to forget it existed, but uh now I remember and uh jesus fuck this guy sings like a horny cat."

In desperation he pressed play on the tape deck. The strains of "Heart Like A Wheel" started playing instead.

"Richard- Richard is that Linda Ronstadt?"

"Uhhh yeah. Lame, right? Maybe we can find something-"

"No! Not lame! I have this album!" Jared said excitedly.

"Oh? Like on vinyl?"

Jared laughed. "Who has vinyl?"

Right. Right. 2004. Fuck. "Well um it's an old album," Richard mumbled.

"I have it on cassette," Jared said. "I don't have an MP3 player. I don't even have a CD player. But I have a Walkman. It was a hand-me-down. Well uh, someone was going to throw it away and I asked if I could have it, and they said no, but then I came back later and fished it out of the trash."

Richard frowned. "Well, whoever that was was a dick."

"Um, are you a big Linda fan, Richard?"

"She's pretty good," Richard said. "I like this album. Um, but my favourite band is Radiohead?"

"Radiohead?"

"You don't know them? C'mon. Paranoid Android? Creep? You must know Creep."

"I don't know a lot about music," Jared said apologetically.

"I'll um, I'll- hey, I'll make you uh a mixtape of some of their stuff. Educate you."

"Oh-" Jared said softly. "um, thank you, Richard. Oh, hey, we're almost there."

Richard parked on a dirt road, then went in back, emptied out his backpack, and filled it with all the other stuff he'd brought for this outing. Jared stared.

"Look at your binoculars!"

"They're not mine, they're my dad's."

"Oh- oh- do you uh- do you think it would be alright if-"

Richard smiled, handed them over.

"Thank you! I'll be super careful," Jared promised, fiddled with the settings and brought them to his eyes, looked around. "wow!" He grinned. "Come on."

Jared led the way down trails and paths, and they walked for more than half an hour. Luckily it was fairly flat and Jared seemed mindful of his long stride, made sure he didn't walk away from Richard.

"Do you mind if I ask you where you lived before?" Jared said.

"Uh, just Tulsa."

"What's the birding like there?"

"Not much different from here, I guess," Richard said. "I mean, I haven't been doing this all that long, but uh, a friend of mine kind of got me into it, and I uh find it relaxing I guess."

"Me too," Jared said. "no matter what's happening around me, birding always... brings me some peace, in a way? And you can do it anywhere! But I never knew anyone else that liked it. It's like, considered an old person hobby I guess."

"Why should old people have all the fun?"

Jared laughed a little. "Exactly." Then he stopped in his tracks, swung out a hand and stopped Richard too. "Look," he whispered.

Richard almost laughed. At least a dozen ducks lay sleeping, dotted around near the lake with their beaks tucked under their wings.

"They look like sofa cushions."

"Walk quietly, so we don't disturb them. Let's go a little farther."

They reached a nice, flat spot with a good view of the lake. A swan family sailed on it, cormorants displayed their wings.

"This is a good spot," Jared said. "if we stay here a while we should see a good few species."

"I've got a blanket," Richard said.

They laid it out and Richard got out the thermos and steeped tea in the cup, got the cookies out. He'd stupidly forgotten to bring more than the one cup so they ended up passing the tea between them, nibbling on their cookies. He looked up at Jared, his severe profile, his adam's apple, his blue gaze fixed on the lake, occasionally bringing the binoculars to his eyes. Whenever a new kind of bird approached Richard looked it up, read some facts from his book. He suddenly saw the charm to this. It was fun. Kind of like collecting Pokemon. He made a promise to himself when he got back to normal he'd buy a bird book of his own, one he could write in, and he'd take Jared birding, and they'd check every new kind they saw off together.

"Are you nervous about the exams?" Jared asked, passing him the tea cup.

"Uhh," Richard said. He'd pretty much decided he was going to take the ones in Tulsa. How lame was he? The world's first time traveller and he spent his second chance at youth going to TWO high schools and sitting fucking exams. "Probably won't show."

"What?"

Richard shrugged.

"But you're so smart. I figured you only enrolled so late so you'd get a chance to graduate."

"I'll graduate," Richard mumbled. "don't worry about it."

"Will you go to prom?" Jared asked. Richard scoffed.

"No."

"I overheard some of the girls talking about you. Marianne said she wishes you'd ask her."

"Who the hell is Marianne?"

"Um, redhead, green eyes, charming tooth gap? Sits on the desk in front of ours?"

Richard shrugged. "Well, I'm not going. Prom. I'd rather die."

"I've never been," Jared said. "would have been nice to go, the once."

"Well, I hear Marianne is looking for a date."

Jared went quiet, grabbed the binoculars again.

They saw sandpipers, gulls, herons and even one very beautiful kingfisher, which Jared clearly recognized. He smiled all over his face when it appeared, like it was an old friend, and thrust the binoculars at Richard, talking excitedly about its plumage. They ate all the raisin cookies (gross but Richard was getting hungry), drank all the tea, and when it started getting dark they trekked back to the car.

"Did you have a good time today?" Richard asked. He kind of couldn't tell. Well, he could absolutely tell Jared was enraptured by the birds and happy to use Richard's dad's binoculars and eat his cookies, but he still kind of got the impression he'd rather be doing all this on his own, without Richard.

Jared stopped in his tracks. "Oh- yes, Richard! Didn't you?"

"Uh yeah, totally, it's just, you go so quiet sometimes, it's hard to like, tell."

"I'm sorry," Jared said. He started walking again, looking down on his feet. "I'm not really used to people wanting to hang out with me. I'm bad at it, I guess."

"I wouldn't say that," Richard said. "I mean, I'd still rather hang out with you than anyone else in this podunk town."

Jared looked at him then, smiled an uncertain little smile. "Um. Same to you, Richard."

They drove back into town, Richard absently driving towards Jared's apartment complex, not remembering he wasn't supposed to know where it was. Luckily, Jared pointed out the window before he could get too close. "Hey," he said. "pull over over there, by the Burger King. I'll walk home from there."

"What? I'll drive you home, don't be silly."

"No, that's okay. Over here."

Richard frowned. That had to be a good mile from his house? But he pulled over, and Jared unbuckled, smiled.

"I guess this is goodbye," Jared said. "it was really nice meeting you, Richard."

"What do you mean goodbye?"

Jared tilted his head. "Well uh- if you're not coming back to school-"

"I mean- we can still like, hang out, if you want? Hey, tomorrow’s Saturday, you free? Uh, or are you studying or-"

"I'm free," Jared said quickly. "I don't think I can study anymore. There's not room for anything more in my head."

"Cool, I'll uh, I'll pick you up tomorrow uh, like, two? Two okay?"

Jared nodded. Richard reached back in the mess of books and school things in the backseat, ripped some paper out of a notebook and scribbled on it.

"Here's um, here's my number, just in case. But uh yeah, let's, like, whatever, right?"

"Right," Jared said. "meet me outside school, okay?"

"Yeah okay. See you."

Jared smiled a shy smile and nodded. Then he waved, turned and walked away. Richard looked after him, tall, ungainly and bony, with his mop of dark hair and worn backpack. He was going to need a new plan to get back to the future. But it wouldn't hurt to spend some more time with Jared in the meantime.

* * *

Richard blinked awake. Weird, how quick he'd gotten used to waking up in his old room. He looked at the time. Noon. Maybe it was the whole, teenage body situation, but he slept like the dead lately. But it was Saturday, and he could sleep in. Saturday, and he'd see Jared again. 

He got up, scratched himself, pressed a button on his clunky Nokia phone, the one he'd been so proud of once. A few messages. Big Head asking if he was still sick. They'd used to hang out all the time, not seeing each other for nearly a week was unheard of and he probably missed Richard. He felt a little bad. 

_Getting better, I'll be back in school on Monday_ Richard wrote. 

_I'm going to fail every test :(_

__

__

_You'll be fine dude_

Richard put the phone down, felt a little unqualified to offer any teenage reassurance or solidarity. Big Head hated tests a lot, they were the only things that stressed him out and Richard had spent a lot of time talking him down over the course of their friendship. Richard was stressed out about literally everything else and Big Head calmed him down about those things though, so it was a good deal. He went in the shower, then tried picking out some non-awful clothes in a mostly-horrible wardrobe. He smiled at old band T-shirts he'd forgotten about. He pulled on a thin jumper, then put a Radiohead T-shirt over it, looked at himself in the mirror. Not bad? It was a look that looked idiotic on anyone a day out of their teens, but on a sixteen year old it was pretty cool. He really needed a haircut though, he was entering Sideshow Bob territory. He hadn't had the time. His skin had cleared up a good bit in the last week. Richard had hated his acne as a teen, but clearly for all he took all his pride in being a smart kid had never made the link between his Dorito diet and his skin problems. Eating like a more or less normal adult helped a lot.

He went downstairs, grabbed some cereal.

"Well don't you look handsome today!" his mom said.

"Thanks," Richard said.

"You off somewhere?"

"Yeah."

"I've barely seen you all week. What are you up to?"

Richard shrugged. "Just studying at the library. I have like three tests next week." He finished his cereal, reached out and hugged her. "I'll probably be back late. See you then."

He biked out to pawpaw's place. They had some more lemonade, pawpaw told him some patently untrue story about some time a pig got in the fermenting cherries and got drunk and caused a ruckus which nevertheless had him crying laughing.

"Shit," Richard said, looked at the time on his phone. "I have to go. Okay I take the Dodge?"

"Gonna go see that guy of yours again?"

"Uh huh."

"Okay. Look, I'm setting another condition on you borrowing my car."

"What?"

"I'm sick of eating dinner on my own. You're gonna come over, and you're gonna help me cook, and we're gonna watch a Hitchcock together."

Richard smiled. "You're always welcome at the house, you know."

Pawpaw scoffed. "Don't negotiate. My car, my rules."

"Okay, uh, Wednesday's good for me! I have tests on uh Monday and Tuesday, but Wednesday's free. I'll come over Wednesday night."

"Good. And fill er up."

"Yup."

Richard grabbed the keys and drove off for McKing. He was a little early, pulled up by the school about ten minutes to two, but Jared was already there, waiting. He opened the car door, smiled gently at Richard.

"Hey!"

"Hey J- hey, Donald!"

"So um, where are we going?"

Richard shrugged. "Let's just drive, find out." Jared grinned.

So they drove and they listened to pawpaw's country cassettes, trying to yodel along with Hank Williams and cracking each other up. _I got a feelin' called the blu-u-ues, oh, Lord, since my baby said goodbye, Lord, I don't know what I'll do all I do is sit and si-i-igh, oh, Lord._ They stopped at a drive in, Jared meticulously counted out change and Richard ordered milkshakes, a chocolate for himself and a strawberry for Jared.

"That's my favourite!" Jared said excitedly. 

Richard flushed a little. He'd just absently got his regular order. "Uh, lucky guess. So uh, ah, Donald, what are you going to do after you graduate?"

"Work," Jared said. "work, and save. I want to go to college."

"Yeah, and study what?"

"Something that will make me good money," he said. Richard grinned. "what's funny?"

"I don't know, don't see you as the, most money-motivated guy I guess?"

"You know I uh... I live with a foster family," Jared said. Richard realized he probably was not supposed to know that. Jared hadn't mentioned it. Until today, all they'd discussed was school, and birds. 

"Oh," Richard said. "um... you uh, you don't have a mom and dad?"

Jared shook his head. "My mom died when I was four. Don't know my dad, all I have is a name. I thought I might look for him some day. I've stayed with twenty-two different families."

"What the fuck!"

Jared shrugged. "I guess I'm just difficult. I try not to be, but... it never works."

Richard reached a hand out, stroked it quickly down his arm. "I don't think you're difficult at all."

Jared smiled a little. "No offense, Richard, but you really don't know me very well."

Richard cleared his throat. "Fair."

"Well, the point is, I never want to live on anyone's charity again. I'm going to work, and save up, and go to college, and make a lot of money, and I'll never be dependent on another human being again. That's my plan."

"Hmm."

"What about you?"

"Uhh... gonna apply to Stanford. Computer science. I wanna be a coder."

"Computers," Jared said approvingly. "there's a lot of money there."

It was a little weird, spending time with this young, raw Jared, but it was... it was really fascinating too. And they had fun. Richard realized for all the time they spent together they never really just hung out like this. There was always a kind of, work context to almost every interaction they had. This was different. And it was interesting being with a Jared that wasn't obsessively trying to please him, either. But he was feeling more sure Jared actually did like him. He smiled more. He talked more. He laughed more. At one point they found a drive-in cinema and sat in the car sharing some popcorn, watching old Popeye cartoons, and Jared laughed so hard at them he literally cried. He just looked really happy and it was a nice thing to see. 

*

"And I been from Tucson to Tucumcari, Tehachapi to Tonapah," Richard and Jared howled along to the Linda Ronstadt cassette, Jared with a ridiculous semi-southern twang. "Driven every kind of rig that's ever been made! Driven the back roads so I wouldn't get weighed!" They dramatically drew their breaths in. "And if you give me weeeed-" Jared almost continued singing but Richard grabbed his arm, grinning, to remind him of the pause- "whiiiites- and- wiiine," Jared laughed, catching up to the song. "And you show me a sign, I'll be willin', to be movin'!"

"Best fucking driving song ever written," Richard said.

"I love Linda so much," Jared said. "she's one of the few people with the guts to say something about our so-called president too."

"Oh right uh," Richard said. "Dubya."

"He's so awful. I don't know what I'll do if he gets reelected. I'm not sure how this country can take another four years of this."

"Could always be worse," Richard said.

"Worse than George W. Bush jr?" Jared laughed. "How?"

"Like, he's just the symptom of the disease within the Republican party. Senior was the old guard, junior is the new. I mean the father of the modern Republican party is Ronald Reagan, a dumb as fuck actor who people-"

Wait. Ronald Reagan. A memory suddenly jumped to the forefront of his mind of his mother and pawpaw throwing an impromptu party at the news of his death. She'd fired up the barbecue, put on a disco record. Pawpaw had brought a selection of his fruit liqueurs over, come honking in his truck. His dad, muttering about how this was in damn poor taste, either you agreed with him or not, the man was dead.

"Sorry, Jim," pawpaw had told him. "from now on, June fifth is an annual holiday in this family." Wasn't it 2004? Hadn't he been sixteen? He'd found it hilarious. That was only a few days from now.

"Who people what?" Jared asked, interested.

Richard cleared his throat. "Uh, nevermind. So I know weed and wine, but what the hell are whites supposed to be?"

Jared looked confused for a moment before he remembered those were the words to the song. "Drugs," he said.

"Oh. Duh."

"Amphetamines, specifically. Truckers used to take them a lot to stay awake during long stretches."

"How the fuck do you know these things?"

"I stayed with a foster family in Texas, the dad was a truck driver. He said he missed them. Said coffee didn't do the trick."

"Huh."

"Oh, Richard," Jared said wistfully. Richard's chest suddenly felt fuller. He hadn't realized how much he'd missed that endearment. "this is exactly what I didn't want to happen."

"Huh? What? Like, having some fun?"

"No. Finding something in Oklahoma to miss." He sighed. "In a week I might never see you again."

"Come on, Juh- Donald."

Jared laughed. "What is that thing you keep trying to call me?"

"What?"

"You always call me j-donald."

"Not always!"

"A lot."

Richard bit his lip. "Jared. Um. He was. Is. A really good friend. And. You remind me. Of him."

"Where is he now?"

"Way too far away," Richard said. "I really fucking miss him. I'm sorry. I'll be more mindful, Donald." 

"It's okay. I've been called worse than Jared."

"I'll drive you home," Richard said. It was getting late.

"No, that's okay, let me off at the gas station coming up, I'll walk."

"Dude, let me drive you home, come on. What. Are you afraid I'll see you don't live on the good side of McKing?" Richard sniggered. "Is there a good side of McKing?"

Jared bit his lip.

"Like, let me drive you to the street at least."

"Okay. Take a right in the next intersection."

They were silent for a while. 

"Take a left here. Um. So, uh... like, you don't have to answer this. Sorry if I'm-"

"What?"

"Um- Jared- was he your boyfriend? I mean I only ask because you said- stuff they called you at your school- I mean I have nothing against-"

Richard flushed a little. "Uhh, it's okay. Um. No. He wasn't." He cleared his throat. "Maybe he should have been."

"Oh-"

"Can't believe I'm kind of realizing that now. How pathetic." When things were back to normal, he was finding a new therapist.

"Don't be so down on yourself. Have you even turned eighteen? You're not supposed to have everything figured out."

"Ha ha. How about by thirty two?"

Jared laughed. "Yeah, you should probably have your act together by then."

"Ouch," Richard said. "it's not easy being a grown up either, you know."

"It has to be better than this," Jared said.

"Oh, definitely," Richard said. "hey, at least we're super fucking hot."

Jared laughed so hard he doubled over.

*

"Here, this is the building."

Richard slowed down. Jared turned to look at him.

"Thanks so much, Richard. I can't remember the last time I had such a lovely day."

"Um, er, thank you, m'lord, huh huh."

Jared grabbed the door handle, pushed it down, then paused. He quickly turned to Richard and leaned in and pressed the tiniest, lightest kiss to his mouth. Richard barely had the time to make a small, surprised noise before Jared hauled ass out of the car, slammed the car door closed behind him, ran up the stairs to his building. Richards mouth dropped open stupidly. He could see Jared fumble with his key, then he glanced back over his shoulder with a nervous look on his face, and Richard raised a hand, then slowly smiled until he was grinning. Jared grinned back, relief written all over him, in that helpless skull like way he did, corners of his mouth turning sharply down, eyebrows up, teeth showing. Then he locked himself in, closing the door behind him.

* * *

"What are you smiling about?" Richard's mom asked. They were eating dinner together, him and his parents, he'd been called down from his room where he'd been cramming for his tests - he felt fairly confident he'd ace whatever a fucking Tulsa high school teacher could throw at him but better to be on the safe side - to eat, and he was tucking into a beef noodle casserole. 

"Isn't it obvious?" Richard's dad said. "He stays out all day. Showers without being reminded to. Doesn't look like a blind amputee dressed him."

"No," his mom said, gave him a big warm glorious smile. "Richard?"

Richard felt awkward. He'd been mortified about being teased about prospective girlfriends as a teen, mostly because there were no prospects. But at the same time he could now recognize his parents had just wanted him to be normal, wanted him to be happy, and did genuinely view him as someone capable of attracting a member of the opposite sex, which had just seemed like a deeply cruel joke at sixteen.

"I don't have a girlfriend," he said. "if that's what you're implying. I've been at the library all week. And Mrs Thompson turned me down."

His parents guffawed at the mention of the retirement age librarian, and Richard smiled, happy to have diffused the situation. 

Richard finished eating and went back to his room to read some more, and he'd barely gotten to sit down when his phone rang. He looked at it. Unknown number. Okay? He picked up.

"Uh hello?"

 _"Hi, Richard?"_ It was Jared. The connection wasn't great.

"Donald, hey!"

 _"Hi!"_ His voice was lilted high. _"Oh gosh, I- I don't have a lot of time but I just um, I just wanted to hear how you are-"_

"Yeah, good, uh."

_"And um, maybe you want to hang out again, today? I thought- I thought I'd go down by the lake-"_

Shit. The lake was a two hour drive away, plus half an hour to get the car, and it was already past five, and he had a test first thing in the morning.

"Oh, um, I can't today, I'm really sorry."

 _"Oh, no that's okay, that's fine-"_ Jared said quickly.

"Hey how about, how about Wednesday?"

_"Wednesday's perfect!"_

"Great, let's- oh, shit, I forgot, I promised my granddad I'd have dinner with him, um..."

_"Oh-"_

"Hey, uh, Donald- why don't you come along?"

_"What?"_

"Yeah uh, my granddad is really cool, and he loves Linda Ronstadt too and- um- and I told him about you."

There was a pause. _"Really?"_

"Yeah, really. Wanna come?"

_"Well- well alright, Richard!"_

"Great. He uh, lives in Tulsa, can you take the bus out? Be at the station by four? We'll come pick you up."

_"Okay!"_

"Great, I'll, I'll see you then."

_"Ca-"_

The connection cut then and Richard frowned. "Hello? Hello?" He tried calling back, but the number was dead.

* * *

The tests on Monday and Tuesday went well, and Richard felt smug. Tests were one of the few things he'd liked about school (well, before Stanford, when it all went to hell). He could just sit alone, quietly, and work, and have evidence of how damn smart he was at the end of it. Big Head tended to do okay too (which Richard had suspected had a lot to do with just being sheer lucky on multiple choice questions, a belief knowing Big Head into adulthood had only strengthened) but he always acted like it was the end of the world after every test.

"I'm sure I failed," he said, dejectedly. They were sharing fries at McDonalds in a "we got this far" celebration. The last test was Friday. 

"You never fail, and you always say you do."

"This time I'm right." He dunked his forehead into the table, hair fanning out. "I'm going to have to live with my mom for the rest of my life."

"I wouldn't mind living with your mom for the rest of my life," Richard said.

Big Head looked up, stared. "Uh shut up?"

Richard laughed.

* * *

Wednesday evening Richard and pawpaw were waiting at the bus stop. Then one green dusty bus pulled up, and among the passengers alighting were Jared.

"There he is!" Richard said.

"Who? The stringbean?"

"Uh yeah." Richard frowned. "Don't call him that." He walked over, waving, and Jared smiled shyly when he saw him, raised a hand. Richard grabbed his hand and squeezed, quick, then let it go. 

"Hi, Richard!"

"Hey, come on."

Richard walked ahead, Jared trailing after. 

"Pawpaw, this here is Donald."

Pawpaw stuck a hand out and Jared carefully took it, shook. "Very nice to meet you, mister-"

"I only answer to pawpaw these days," pawpaw said. "might as well call me that."

"Oh! Uh, okay."

"Tall drink of water, ain't you?"

"Pawpaw," Richard hissed. Pawpaw's eyes twinkled, but Richard noticed Jared slouching. He was already as tall as when Richard had first got to know him, taller than pawpaw and most grown men, but Richard still had a couple of inches to grow. He suddenly realized how ridiculous they must look together. Lurch and Pugsley. But then again, so the fuck what? 

"Ever ride in the back of a truck before, son?"

"Not with permission," Jared said earnestly.

There was a beat, then pawpaw laughed. "Come on, boys."

Richard stepped up into the back of the truck, reached out a hand and pulled Jared up too. There were some old blankets there that made it a little more comfortable to sit. Pawpaw started driving. 

"Is this um, legal?" Jared asked.

"Nobody cares," Richard said. He loved riding like this. Especially on such a sunny day. "and don't pay too much attention to pawpaw, he plays up the folksy thing. He's an old hippie, really. Spent a year in prison because he refused to serve in Vietnam. And he taught high school maths while mawmaw was still alive. But when she passed there was too much work with the farm for him to keep it up."

"Oh, is that where you get your brains from?" Jared smiled.

"The math thing, probably, yeah. Mom is smart but in like, other areas."

They left the city and drove onto country roads, it became a little bumpier, and apart from the sound of the car there were birds and bleating and and the sun was warm on their faces. Richard caught Jared closing his eyes, facing the breeze. He looked beautiful. 

At the farm Jared and Richard were set to work shelling peas and beans, peeling potatoes and cutting onions. Richard had worried Jared would be shy and uncomfortable but he seemed to really take to pawpaw. Well, he always did like old people. And to his relief, pawpaw seemed to take to Jared. Especially after Richard said, "so uh pawpaw, Donald's as in love with Linda Ronstadt as you are."

Pawpaw stopped in his tracks. "What?"

"Oh, I just think she's a genius," Jared said. "I love her voice and she seems like such a warm human being."

Whereupon pawpaw had pulled out his collection of albums and singles, and Jared's eyes had just about rolled out of his head. Jared was at work shelling now, and Desperado was playing on warm vinyl. He finished up his bowl, then got up.

"Um, can I ask where is the bathroom?"

"Shovel in the hallway, son. Dig a hole anywhere you like."

Richard rolled his eyes. "Upstairs, to the left."

Jared nodded, walked upstairs.

"I like him," pawpaw said. "he's polite, and he's got good taste in music. That's more than you can say for most."

Richard smiled.

They sauteed the potatoes and vegetables, roasted chicken, and had fresh picked strawberries with sugar and cream afterwards. Then pawpaw wanted to watch a movie. It was his firm idea that Hitchcock was the greatest American filmmaker, even if he wasn't American, and he showed Richard all his movies. They'd got to Rebecca. 

"You seen it, son?"

"Oh, no," Jared said. "I haven't seen a lot of movies."

"You're in for a treat," pawpaw said. Richard jerked his head and Jared went to sit next to him on the sofa while pawpaw went through his neatly hand-labelled VHS collection. Richard smiled when it started playing. The TV was shitty, the sound and audio was shitty, but like- it was good? Like it was almost better? It was probably just his nostalgia, and his memories of pawpaw's VHS collection and watching all these films with him, Marnie, Rear Window, Psycho, but the creaky movie quality filled his heart like nothing in his Complete Works of Alfred Hitchcock blu-ray set did.

Jared sank down in his seat next to Richard, close enough their arms bumped, enraptured from the opening monologue. _On and on wound the poor thread that had once been our drive, and finally there was Manderley. Manderley - secretive and silent._

By the end of it pawpaw had been asleep for a while. Richard walked over, gently shook him awake.

"Uh? Huh?"

"Go to bed, pawpaw."

"Yeah. Yeah, reckon I will." He got up.

"It was so nice meeting you," Jared said. "I had such a nice time!"

"Mm. Polite. Hang on." He walked over to his albums, pulled out a 7" inch single, handed it to Jared. "Here. Little souvenir for you."

"Oh! Oh, no, I couldn't possibly-"

"I thought you were polite? Very rude to refuse a gift."

Jared carefully accepted the Linda Ronstadt single. "It's too much. I don't even have a record player."

"You can look at the picture until you get one."

Jared got up, hugged pawpaw quick, then drew away. "Thank you," he said in a weak voice.

"Uh, hum," pawpaw grumbled. "well, goodnight, boys."

"Goodnight," Richard and Jared said. He climbed upstairs and Jared looked from the single to Richard. 

"Oh, he's wonderful, Richard! You're so lucky!"

Richard nodded. He probably wouldn't have agreed at sixteen, but he knew Jared was right. "Um, you want me to drive you home, or you have time to see one more thing?"

Jared grinned.

It was getting dark out, and Richard grabbed and lit an oil lamp, which gave off a warm glow. "Come on."

Jared walked gingerly behind him, into the gardens and among the fruit trees, until they got to one big tree, and Richard pointed.

"Oh my goodness!" Jared gasped. "Is- is that a tree house?"

"Yup! Here, hold this."

Richard gave Jared the lamp, then climbed up the steps nailed into the tree. 

"Gonna lower down a bucket, put the lamp in that," Richard said, and he did, and Jared did, and Richard pulled up the lamp, put it on the little ledge. It filled the tiny space with low light. Jared's head appeared in the entrance. His mouth fell open.

"I can't believe this."

Richard reached out a hand and Jared climbed inside on his hands and knees. When Richard had been seven, eight, nine, he could comfortably stand inside, but those days were over, and Jared definitely had to crouch together. There wasn't much in the space - a bucket on a rope, a wooden box nailed to the wall with comic books a decade old Richard had read hundreds of times over, a sheepskin covering the floor. 

"If I could have lived here when I was little, I would have," Richard said. "me and my friend Big Head spent as much time as we could up here. Spent the night a few times too, scaring each other silly telling scary stories. Space Base Five," he said and chuckled. "that was one of our games. We were astronauts on Space Base Five, sent out to habitable planets to scout. Hostile aliens would always appear."

"How magical," Jared whispered. 

"Even when we stopped playing games like that I loved hanging out here, just reading. Coming up here with a book, a soda, a radio, some candy... heaven."

"I believe you. Gosh, I wish I could have had something like this."

"I'll share it with you," Richard smiled. They were sitting shoulder to shoulder against the wall, Jared had drawn his long legs up in front of himself. He looked at Richard, smiled a little helplessly, lips a little parted, then his eyes closed. Richard swallowed, then he leaned in a little, and they met in a sweet kiss. 

Richard realized this, technically, was his first kiss. In his real life that was still more than a year off and it had been a fucking disaster, a girl he'd met during fresher's week, she'd seemed pretty down for it and then Richard had basically flailed at her with his tongue and she'd left and he'd just sat there confused. His first girlfriend, who appeared a couple months later, had taken pity and given him some constructive feedback and much-needed practice. He didn't think he ever gotten all that fantastic at it though. It just kind of bored him? He started thinking of other stuff, and that was if he was comfortable. If he wasn't he tended to try too hard, to impress, which usually didn't work very well. But it was different with Jared. It was like they spoke the same language, surfed the same wave, heard the same rhythm. "Just don't think about it," his first girlfriend, Julia, had told him. Richard had answered that anything less than being in a vegetative state couldn't stop him from thinking, which she'd taken a little offense to, and now, after a decade and a half, he realized why. The weird, niggling, critical voice in his head, the one that both kind of made and ruined his life, the one that always told him to do better and think harder and fix things, had, for a blessed moment, shut the fuck up. At the very least Richard couldn't hear it over the soft silk of Jared's pink lips, over his little sighs, over the insane thrill of the tip of his tongue brushing at Richard's mouth and then inside. 

Richard pulled away to breathe, suddenly felt like he'd run a mile. "Fuck," he said. "wow.

"Wow," Jared agreed, grinning.

"Wow," Richard continued the scintillating conversation before leaning in to kiss Jared again. Jared carefully brought a big hand up to his hair, gently petted at Richard's big ridiculous curls. 

"I've been meaning to get a haircut," Richard said apologetically, pulling away.

"Oh! Don't!" Jared said. "I mean- oh, I like your hair."

"Seriously?"

"Uh huh" Jared said and leaned in again, tightening his grip in it a little.

They kissed again and Richard let his arms come around Jared. Was this a good idea? Probably not. But it felt too nice to stop. Then Jared's hand slid down to the end of Richard's T-shirt, started tugging it upwards.

"Uh oh hey uh" 

Jared stilled the movement of his hand, smiled at him. "It's so nice and warm. We could stay here all night."

Richard smiled, sighed. He had to clear his head. He wasn't Richie Hendricks, sixteen and a half, falling in love for the first time, he was CEO Richard Hendricks, 32, and a half baked plan to get the fuck back to the future had resulted in seducing an endlessly vulnerable seventeen year old version of his COO instead. Worst fucking time traveller ever. He even beat Guy Pearce in that piece of shit movie. 

Worst of all, he still didn't have any better fucking plans. He cleared his throat.

"Uh, I'm going to tell you something Donald, something super fucking weird, and you're not gonna believe me, and you'll maybe think I'm crazy."

"Okay," Jared said, tilting his head.

"Uh... but I'm not gonna tell you yet. I will, however, tell you that Ronald Reagan will die."

"Huh? Former president Reagan? I thought he already was dead."

"No, he's like, ninety something. And he's going to die."

Jared nodded solemnly. "I think you may be right, Richard."

"No, fuck, I mean, I know when he dies. He dies on Saturday. He dies on the fifth. I just want you to remember that okay? Check the news."

Jared pursed his lips a little. "You know, I've known others who believed they were psychic, I mean, it's not a-"

"I don't- I'm not a fucking psychic! That's not the thing! Just remember I said that okay?"

"Okay, Richard." Jared smiled. "Um, so you know what this Friday is, right?"

Richard shrugged. 

"Um, well it's prom."

"Yeah, I think you said."

"And uh, Richard..." Jared took both of his hands in his. "I know you said you didn't want to go, and I'm sure you think it's stupid, and I think it's stupid too, except - oh, just the once, it would be- it would be so nice to be able to go? Just like, we don't have to like hold hands or dance or anything like that, we can just hang out and talk, nobody would have to know you were my date except me-"

Richard bit his lip. He'd happily passed on every one of his proms. Why he'd voluntarily 1. dress up, 2. listen to shitty radio pop, 3. dance, and about a hundred other points, was beyond him, and he couldn't believe the big fucking deal everybody made about it. Even now, he still kind of couldn't, but he could see Jared's naked desire to take part in the normal teenage experience. 

"Okay," he said.

"Okay?" Jared beamed back.

"Uh, yeah, okay, just, don't make me dance."

Jared hugged him close. "Thank you, Richard!"

"Yeah okay uh. Well uh, it's late, let me drive you home." 

Jared smiled all the way back to his apartment complex, reverently turning his new 7" in his hands. He kissed Richard once, twice before getting out, plans for Friday arranged. Richard drove back with a weird kind of feeling. Well, by the end of the week, Jared would know. 

* * *

The rest of the week passed very quickly, and then it was Friday, and Richard had finished his final test, and he and Big Head were walking down the hallways together. 

"We did it," Richard said. "now we have all of summer ahead of us."

"Thank god for that," Big Head said. "I feel sick. Um, wanna come to my place? Mom's making her lasagne, and we can play Counter-Strike?"

Man, the thought of Theresa Bighetti's lasagne made his mouth water. He suddenly wondered if Big Head had asked her to make it especially. He'd really been paying him dust these weeks. 

"I'm busy tonight," he said apologetically.

"Oh. Okay. Uh, how about this weekend?"

"Dude, um, there's kind of a lot going on right now, like, but I'll call you? Super soon?"

Big Head stopped. "Richard are- are you like seeing someone?"

"Huh?" Jesus Christ, was he that transparent?

"Like, I mean, I'm glad for you if that's the case, but what I don't understand is why you wouldn't tell me. I tell you everything."

"I'm not, god."

"But there's something you're not telling me?"

Richard bit his lip. "Okay, cool. Uh. Look, I have a fucking problem right now, and I'm trying to fix it, and hopefully I will, and then everything will be back to normal, totally."

Big Head's eyes went a little dark. "Oh okay. Whatever."

"I'm sorry! If I could tell you, I would!"

"Whatever," Big Head said again, walked quickly, away from Richard, and jumped into his mom's waiting car. Richard felt terrible. He needed this whole thing to end. He grabbed his face. Prom. He'd survive prom tonight, then he was focussing all his energy on getting back where he belonged. 

He biked by pawpaw's place to pick up the Dodge, then back home, had dinner. He wrote a note which said CALL BIG HEAD and taped it onto his closet. He showered again (apparently incriminating behavior? What had he been like as a teenager?) and tried to find clothes that looked fancy. He ended up on black jeans, a black blazer and a fairly nice dress shirt. He borrowed some of his dad's aftershave, even if he didn't have anything to shave. He had planned on going by the barber but after Jared had said he liked his hair he thought he'd hold onto it a little longer. His mom was out with some friends, his dad was watching TV in the living room. He just needed to sneak out without being seen looking like a little real estate agent. He walked out of his room, looked down into the empty hallway, heard the TV on in the other room. He went downstairs. He could just shout GOING OUT when he got to the door and that would be that. He walked quietly so the staircase wouldn't creak, tiptoed like a cat burglar for the door.

"Going to the library?" his dad asked. Richard turned and he was standing in the kitchen doorway, a glass of iced tea in his hand.

Richard turned fire engine red. "um uh I uh"

"Hang on."

"No, dad-"

His dad walked over to his jacket, got his wallet out and pulled out a twenty.

"Here. For your late fines." He winked.

Richard accepted it, no smart comment coming to him, he just felt caught and stupid and blindingly adolescent. He nodded, left without another word.

An hour and a half later he pulled up outside Jared's building. Jared came out. He wore a suit and a tie and an enormous grin. 

"Wow, you look amazing," Richard said. 

"Thank you!" Jared said. "I thrifted this suit for like five dollars, and then I used the sewing machine at the public library to make it fit. It was a lot of work but I got there in the end!"

"Yeah it looks tailored, it looks super good," Richard said, impressed. "huh, you're like Cinderella. Complete with the birds, ha ha."

"And the mice!"

Richard frowned. "Um, let's go."

"You look super handsome," Jared said, grinning. "oh, I can't believe this is happening! It's like someone's going to pull the rug out from under me any second."

Richard smiled weirdly.

The prom was pretty much exactly like Richard had expected it. The gym was turned into a ballroom, there was a makeshift stage where a shitty local band was going to play later, a punch bowl and snacks on paper plates, a squadron of incredibly awkward looking paired up teenagers dancing fearfully to "The Reason" by Hoobastank. Richard shuddered. He was glad to be the age he was, glad he was born at just the right time when the thing he was the best at in the world was important, but god, being a teen in the noughties was singularly undignified. What had been their equivalent of fifties rockers or seventies flower children? At least modern teens cared about the environment. But he looked up at Jared, smiling and starry-eyed, looking sleek and handsome and almost like the man he'd soon become, and figured a night of cringe was worth it to make him happy. 

They got drinks and snacks and found a place to sit and they talked and laughed for close to an hour and Richard could actually ignore his surroundings, he found. It wasn't so bad after all, as long as you were with the right person. A Nickelback song came on and where that used to send him into paroxysms of performative disgust he just laughed at how fucking shitty it was now.

"God, listen to this dude strain," he giggled and started a Chad Kroeger impression, closing his eyes and twisting his face up. "SYUM DAY! SYUM HOW! AH GUNNA MAKE IT ALRIGHT BUH NOT RIH NOW!"

Jared laughed, leaning back. 

"Honestly, why the American military didn't treat Nickelback as a severe act of Canadian aggression-"

"Hi, Richard!" 

Richard shut up and turned. A pretty brunette, possibly someone from his class (all these fetuses looked the same to him) was standing there with some friends.

"Uh, hey, you."

"Didn't think you'd show. You haven't taken any tests."

Richard shrugged. "Just uh here to party baby."

"Wanna dance with me?" she said, smiling, tilting her head.

"Um... I don't like dancing uh, sorry, just gonna, uh."

"Oh come on. You're gonna spend prom night propping up the wall with this loser?"

Richard looked over at Jared. His big smile had dropped off his face and he'd gone completely white, hunching in a little over himself.

"Don't say that," one of the girl's friends said in a theatrical whisper. "he's crazy, what if he starts beating on you."

"You gonna go apeshit, Apeshit?" the brunette said, laughing.

"If you want to dance, I don't mind, Richard," Jared said quietly. 

"Well then," the girl said.

"Yeah, okay, one dance," Richard said, got up. The brunette grinned. Richard turned to Jared and reached out a hand. "you coming or what?"

Jared stared with big wondering eyes, then took his hand and they walked together out onto the dancefloor. "I Don't Wanna Know" was playing now, Richard had loathed this song too but at least it was kind of a slowie. He heard some laughing and comedy retching noises in the background. Not that he gave a shit what a bunch of literal children who were going to grow up to catch covid-19 at Trump rallies thought, but he didn't really want to put Jared at risk.

"You okay? I wasn't thinking," Richard whispered.

Jared just smiled warmly in response. "Yes."

"Seriously, I can't dance at all."

"Me either. It doesn't matter."

"Also I kind of want to leave after this so we don't get hatecrimed in the parking lot."

"Richard. Hush."

Richard nodded, pressed his lips together, grabbed onto Jared's waist a little tighter, and they danced through that song, and then the next. Then the DJ put on Maroon 5's "This Love" and Richard made a horrified face. "I'm not fucking dancing to this. I refuse. I'd only listen to this voluntarily if I was committing suicide and suddenly lost motivation."

Jared shook his head, smiled. "Let's leave."

They hustled out of the gym, some wolf whistles after them, and Richard turned, flipped the bird. "Adios, children," he shouted, then he grabbed Jared's hand and they ran outside, and Jared laughed.

Soon they were in the Dodge. "Sorry um that was cut kind of short," Richard said. "some times I just do and say shit without thinking. I'm working on it."

"Don't apologize! It was wonderful!" Jared grinned. "You're- you are extraordinary, Richard Hendricks."

"Well um. Night's uh, still young, my dad gave me some money, wanna uh, grab something to eat?"

"I'm not really hungry, but um, I know somewhere we can go."

They drove out, towards the lake, and Richard wondered if Jared had some late night birding in mind or what, but he had him pull over somewhere kind of in the middle of nowhere, shaded in by tall trees.

"Okay?" Richard said, unsurely. "What's here?"

"Privacy," Jared said, grinning, and maneuvered his way into the backseat. "come on."

Richard bit his lip. He knew he shouldn't do this. But Jared was so beautiful and smiled so big and looked so happy and held out a large white hand and he found himself taking it, climbing over the seats to get to him. So Jared half-laid down on the backseat and Richard laid on top of him and Jared's large hands came up in his wild hair and they kissed and they kissed. Richard grabbed Jared's chin with his fingers, made the angle better and opened his mouth to make it deeper, couldn't help but move his hips against him, thrilled at the fact Jared was hard too. 

"Richard," Jared gasped.

"Uh huh uh"

"Richard, I've been- I've been thinking about something?"

"Yeah?"

"What if- what if I came with you?"

Richard felt as if he'd been doused with cold water. He probably needed it. 

"Um, came with me?"

"You said you were going to apply to Stanford. If you come in- what if I came with you, to California? I was thinking about New Orleans but that works too. I don't really care. We could find a room together somewhere, I could work, we could save up, I'm very thrifty! And when we could afford it I could go to college too!" Jared bit his lip, looked so hopeful. "I can- I can be useful, Richard! I can cook, I can sew, I'm very clean, I-"

"Look, Jared-"

Jared sighed a little. "You called me Jared again."

"Yeah, I did," Richard said. "because you're him, Donald. You're Jared."

Jared tilted his head and Richard pulled away, sat with his back against the car door.

"We'll meet again in ten years," Richard said in a thin voice.

"Ten years?"

"We'll meet for the first time in ten years. You'll have changed your name by then, from Donald to Jared. We'll found a very successful company together. A compression company. I'm going to be CEO of the company, you will be COO. Like, second in command. Then we'll branch out into quantum computing. I'll go to Switzerland to inspect the integration of our technology and something called the Fermionic Stabilizer. And something- something will happen, and it will throw me back to 2004, and I'll be a teenager again. And I'll be so fucking scared and confused and desperate for help I decide to find the most important person in my life, the one who always helps me when I need it. I decide to find you." Richard laughed a hollow laugh. "Except of course now you're seventeen and you can't help me. Duh."

Jared had turned very white. "What are you saying?"

"I only enrolled in McKing because I needed to meet you. I'm not really sixteen. Or well, I am, but not really. I'm a fucking grown up and I want to go back to my future and back to my life there and back to you. Because, in the future, you love me, and uh, I love you back." Richard felt a tear fall from his eye. "And I need to tell you."

"Okay," Jared said.

"Okay??"

"I believe that you believe-"

"Jesus, Juh- Donald, I'm not- schizophrenic. Look, I know you. I've known you for six years. I know about Winnie, your stuffed animal, the plastic bag with a smiley face."

Jared stared. "Who told you-"

"You did! I know about- um, god, everything you told me from your childhood is so fucking horrible, sorry, but I know about the foster mom who thought you were possessed by Satan, I know about Uncle Jerry's game-"

"Shut up!"

"Donald-"

"Shut up, shut up. Take me home."

"I-"

"Now!"

Richard bit his lip, climbed in the front seat, and looked back at Jared, sheet white and staring resolutely out the window. Well. That had gone amazingly.

* * *

Jared had left the car without saying goodbye, and Richard had driven home feeling like the biggest asshole in the world. Then he felt sorry for himself. It wasn't like time travel came with a fucking manual! Okay, he'd fucked up, but what was he supposed to do? He actually did go to the library the next day, got mrs Thompson to find him every book they had on quantum physics (not that many), and sat down, reading and taking notes.

After a six hour study jag his brain felt like it was going to explode so he biked home, went up to his room and got out his Radiohead CDs. He was still going to make Jared that mixtape. He wasn't sure how he'd get it to him and it'd probably end up in the trash, but he'd said he'd do it so he would. The hardest part was whittling it down to which songs. High and Dry obviously, duh. Street Spririt. No Surprises, the most beautiful song in the world. Creep to start with, ease him in. Karma Police. There There. He wondered if he should put in some of the more experimental stuff too and chose a couple of tracks, scattered in, hoped it would make him curious to seek out more. He filled up two sides then took the cassette out, looked at it. There was a little tape left. If he remembered how to do this shit correctly - a dying art already in 2004 - it wasn't enough for a song. He bit his lip. He put the cassette back in, hit record, put his mouth close to the player and drew a breath.

He was neatly labelling the cassette inlay when his mom called for him to come down.

"What?" he asked, walking down the stairs.

"That piece of shit Reagan is dead!" she said. "We're having a cookout!"

Richard sniggered. He promised himself he'd go back and visit his mom as soon as he could when things were back to normal. She was fucking funny. His dad shook his head. 

"Seriously, Cassie?"

Richard's mom got a CD out of the CD stand and put it on, and "Celebration" by Kool and the Gang started playing. There was a honking outside and pawpaw pulled up in his truck.

"You heard the news girl?"

"What do you think?" she shouted over the music. 

"A man is dead, Cassie," Richard's dad said. Richard folded over laughing.

Richard's dad disapproved throughout the barbecue with a scowling frown which probably looked so familiar to Richard because he wore it a lot himself, but he'd quickly realized he was outgunned by his wife and father in law. They were drinking pawpaw's peach liqueurs and getting a little rowdy, talking about Reagan.

"What really gets me is how fuckin dumb the guy was," pawpaw said. "he really made it okay to be a dumbass. And now we got chief dumbass in the white house. In the future the republicans will throw a wig on a pig and call it a day.

Richard's eyebrows raised.

"Dumb is one thing, but he was mean too," Richard's mom said. "all he could talk about were family values, smiling and smiling, while defunding every thing that might help children and families and giving the money to some of the worst people in this country, who already had plenty. His years in office wasn't a presidency, it was an embezzlement."

"Not to mention how he turned a blind eye to the AIDS epidemic," Richard said.

"Not you too," Richard's dad said, a little pained.

"He did," Richard said, shrugging. "it's true."

"It is true," Richard's mom said, heating up. "family values! What, those poor young men who died in agony didn't have families? Didn't have moms and dads and partners who loved them? Family values, my foot!"

Richard smiled warmly at her. 

"He was a brylcreemed used car salesman who only cared about money," pawpaw said and spat on the ground. "if I was a man of faith I'd celebrate harder, knowing he was going to hell. As it is I can only hope my bladder holds out long enough for me to piss on his grave."

"Richard," Richard's dad told pawpaw in an exasperated voice. After Richard had been born he'd pretty much taken over that name, only mawmaw ever called pawpaw Richard anymore, or Richard's dad if he was very frustrated with him.

Richard noticed a buzzing in his pocket. His phone was ringing. 

"Excuse me," he said. 

Richard's dad had made the terrible mistake of trying to bring up Reagan's good points and was being attacked from both flanks, so nobody even looked up when he left the table. He looked at the number, he didn't know it.

"Um, hello?"

 _"I heard the news,"_ Jared said in an odd voice. _"you were right about Reagan."_

"Oh."

_"I never told anyone about Winnie. Anyone. Nobody ever even saw her. I kept her a secret, and then a crow stole her from me."_

"Uh. Yeah."

_"Richard. If, uh. If I can help you, I'd like to try."_

"Really?"

_"Yeah, I mean, I don't see how, but- but I'm willing to accept the possibility that what you told me is true, and if I can help you, I want to."_

"Thank you. God. Thank you. Can you meet me tomorrow morning? Um, can I pick you up? At ten, maybe?"

_"Yes, Richard. See you then."_

Richard hung up, grinning, and turned to walk back to the table.

* * *

"Off to see that tall fella again?" pawpaw asked, as Richard grabbed the keys to the Dodge from the ashtray in the hallway.

"Yup," Richard said.

"Bring him back over. I have a concert recording I need that boy to watch."

Richard pressed his lips together. "He's uh... he's moving. To New Orleans."

"Oh. Oh, I'm sorry, Richie."

"Uh yeah uh. So I don't know, this might be the last time I see him." Richard cleared his throat. "And uh. I'd really appreciate it if you didn't bring him up again or mention him again to me."

Pawpaw tilted his head. "There's no shame in loving, Richie."

"Yeah."

"And none in feeling pain, either."

"No."

"You're young and these things will come to you again. Over and over. Both the good and the bad."

"Uh," Richard said, fully aware of the tepid mediocrity of his future romantic life. "like, okay, but like, will you just do as I ask? Please?"

"If you like. Sure. You can always talk to me, if you need an ear, though."

Richard smiled, then walked over and hugged him. "I know that."

*

Jared had asked Richard to meet him outside McKing public library. He pulled up, parked and waved when he saw him. Jared raised a hand. 

"Thanks for meeting me," Richard said. 

Jared nodded. "Let's go."

"It's Sunday, won't they be closed?"

"I volunteer there some times, shelving," Jared said and produced a key from his pocket. Richard grinned.

They locked themselves inside and Jared walked over to the shitty old computer, turned it on and waited. Richard emptied his backpack over one of the study tables. 

"What are you doing?" Richard said.

"Just waiting for the catalogue search to boot. It's pretty slow."

"This is a fucking antique," Richard said, contemptuously. 

"Public funding," Jared said, shrugging.

Finally the search appeared.

"Do one for quantum physics."

Jared input the terms and wrote down the shelf numbers.

"Cool, let's go get them."

"Wait."

Jared did a search for time travel. Richard scoffed. "Yeah, I don't think HG Wells is going to help me out?"

"There are two non fiction books here," Jared said.

"Come on!"

Jared frowned at him. "Did you want my help or not?"

"Sorry," Richard muttered.

Jared grabbed a cart and they put in the physics and time travel books, sat down by the table. Richard showed him his notes and walked him through his theories and thought processes so far, even the blueprint for a proposed time machine with POWER? in caps next to it. Jared looked a little shocked.

"Well, Richard, if you're not crazy, you might legitimately be a genius."

"Uh, thanks," Richard said a little sarcastically. Jared smiled at him and opened the book called On The Hows, Whys And Wherefores Of Time Travel by George Tavenstock jr. Richard started looking at the books he hadn't already read. The second time travel book looked more like a self-published zine, probably something from a local crackpot, and was called The Secrets of Travelling Thru Time Lie In The Stars and had no author. In less than two hours, Jared had finished both. Richard refilled Jared’s tea from his thermos. 

"Well?" he asked, tried not to sound sarcastic.

"This one's pretty nutty," Jared said, holding up the first one. "he has a full three chapters on how to go about killing Hitler. He says it's the moral duty of any time traveller."

Richard giggled. "Okay, does he have like a big clock you can turn so you get the right time?"

"Oh he's thought of all that," Jared said. "he's done all the legwork for the time travelling assassin. For instance, he's worked out the best time to kill Hitler is when he was in his early twenties, after he’d had to quit art school and his parents were dead. He spent a while living in shelters then. Because killing children is morally wrong and he'd probably be under the 'fierce protection' of his parents at that time, and later he was just too difficult to get to. He talks about Hitler's would-be assassins and how they all failed. No, young homeless Hitler is the Hitler to kill. Preferably at night, 'make it look like a robbery gone bad, then flee to the future or another time entirely'. He recommends a sharp knife to do the deed, by the way."

"Ugh, god."

"So he's chosen this date, March 15th, 1910." Jared showed him the book, which had a whole table of dates. 

"What's that?" Richard frowned.

"They're dates that align with March 15th, 1910 in terms of planetary alignment. Which I thought was quite interesting because-" Jared got the little zine out - "this guy - I'm assuming it's a guy - talks about how the stars will allow us to time travel. Doesn't this drawing look a little like yours?" 

Richard grabbed the zine, stared. He started flipping through his notes and looked at them. "Yeah it's uh. It's based on the possible models of time, which uh I mean, I assume we both got from the same sources, but uh - this is kind of interesting."

“What?”

"Well, in which direction does time flow?" Richard started drawing. "Is it a line? No, then I wouldn't be back here, I’d only be able to travel forwards. It could be a shaft, maybe, like an elevator, allowing you to go back and forth-" he let his pencil slide forwards and backwards - "but then I'd remember all this, wouldn't I? It would already have happened. I never knew a Donald when I was sixteen."

"I thought you were seventeen."

"Kinda lied about my age to get into your class," Richard muttered. "sorry. Uh. Well, anyway, another theory says time is a circle-" he started drawing again. "here's the big bang event, and here's the big crunch," he said, closing the circle, and then drawing it again, "and then it just starts all over again. "but what THIS guy is postulating, is that time is like a- well, like a curl." He drew a dot. "Here's May 24th, 2004." He grabbed a marker in a different color and drew a dot next to it. "And here's July 17th, 2020. That's the day I went to the site in Switzerland."

"Who's president in 2020?" Jared asked.

"You don't want to know. Now, let's say time moves like this-" he drew a half circle through the first dot, turned it on itself, and made the two dots intersect. "but because it's on a quantum level, we don't actually notice these things."

"It could explain ghosts," Jared said excitedly.

"I mean, so could a lot of things, but yeah, sure. But I mean- yeah, you're right, actually? A lot of unexplained phenomena might be tied to this. If I and this... fucking... crazy ass McKing zinester are right." He sat back in his seat, looking a little dejected.

"Okay," Jared said impatiently. "so he says the same things as this other guy, Tavenstock, that you should be able to get from one 'dot' through another based on planetary alignments. Now, Tavenstock of course was kind enough to give us a whole mathematical model for calculating which dates add up."

Richard frowned. "Can you get me some astronomy books?"

"Aye, aye!" Jared said and Richard looked up at him, bit his lip.

In another half an hour Richard had filled a page with calculations, only aided by the calculator app on his Nokia, the astronomy books and the Tavenstock models. "Jesus," he muttered."

"What?"

"It fucking... like, the fucking dates match according to this. The date I left the future and arrived in the past. And if I'm right, the next fucking date to align to July 17th 2020 to these specs is to-fucking-morrow. And then not for another two years."

"Oh," Jared said. "that doesn't give us a lot of time."

Richard dunked his forehead into the table and groaned.

"Hey, stop. Come on. What kind of event could set this off?"

"I don't know," Richard moaned.

"Yes you do. What does it do, that machine, that uh- Stable Fertilizer-"

Richard looked up, couldn't help but giggle. "Fermionic Stabilizer. Do you know what a Fermion is?"

"I do not."

"It's a kind of particle, named for Enrico Fermi, the famous Italian phycisist. They're pretty chaotic. Okay, in physics, you have basically actions that travel as units. An action, let's call it that, can be a coherent state, which lets the unit maintain its shape while travelling. Or it can be Fermionic, where it shifts and turns. What the Fermionic stabilizer tried to do was take Fermionic states and make them become coherent states, meaning stabilize them."

"Why?"

"To see what the fuck would happen."

"Could it send a person through time? If you're the unit, and the action is traversing time?" Jared drew a little stick figure on one of Richard's shapes, and then an arrow.

"Fuck me," Richard said. "but how are we supposed to control that?"

Jared cleared his throat. "There's a nuclear plant one town over."

“Huh?”

"You could go take a swim in the toxic waste, I guess, hope for the best."

"Ha. Ha." He frowned. "Fuck. Maybe? Shit."

"No, Richard, don't do that!"

"No I-" he started gathering his papers up. "um, I have- I have an idea. Uh. Come on, I'll drive you home."

* * *

"I don't like this," Jared said. It was the next day, a very tired and hollow-eyed Richard had picked him up, and they'd driven over to the power plant, and had climbed over a fence to get to a big, humming machine. "we're not supposed to be here."

"I know," Richard said. "I kind of need help carrying this shit though."

Between them they were carrying a machine Richard had spent all night putting together. It was made out of old computer parts (and some of the best bits of his gaming computer, which would have to be replaced). If it worked like Richard wanted it to, like he'd tested last night, it could create a very small event like the one that had hurtled him backwards in time. Being in the vicinity of the nuclear machine might make that reaction bigger.

Richard set up the screen, started up the program, dropped something into a glass vial and put an electric charge to it. Then he pulled on a pair of thick gloves, pulled a wire over to the metal of the nuclear machine and taped it to it. He bit his lip, looked at Jared. "Uh. If this works? Take this machine to the dump. If it doesn't... uh. Take me to hospital." He opened a command terminal, typed rapidly. "Okay. Here goes."

Then Jared grabbed him before he could hit another key, hugged him close.

"Don't do this. Richard. Don't. Come on. Please. It's too dangerous. It's crazy. Let's leave."

Richard hugged back, then pulled away, smiled up at Jared. He looked raw and sad and upset, his pale face flushed pink. "I almost forgot," he said, got the cassette out of his pocket. "listen to that."

Jared looked at it, nodded, put it in his pocket. Richard turned and hit the Y key.

At first, nothing.

Then, a hum. Which grew louder.

Then a purple glow appeared around Richard's fantastical machine.

"Richard?" Jared gasped.

"Okay I need you to leave, I need you to step back."

"But-"

"Now!"

Jared ran away, and Richard put his hand to the machine.

-

-

-

-

-

"Oh goodness, mister Hendricks! Are you alright?"

"Uh..." Richard blinked. He was on his back, looking up. Five or six worried-looking people in white coats were looking down on him. Maybe he really was crazy. Then he recognized dr Fleischer, extending a hand to him. He took it and she pulled him up.

"I'm so sorry! We have no idea what happened - there was an incredible charge - oh goodness, we are so sorry! We have a doctor on site-"

"No uh, no I'm fine uh, I just- passed out."

"Are you sure?" She raised an eyebrow. "What- what happened, mr Hendricks?"

"We might uh. Have to renegotiate the terms of this facility using Pied Piper tech," Richard said. "uh. Can you guys get me a cab?

A little later, upset scientists having followed him all the way out, Richard was in the taxi and on his way to the hotel. He needed to get the fuck back to the States, to Jared. He got his phone out with shaking hands and tried calling him, but he didn't pick up. Fuck! He did manage to get hold of his PA, who booked him tickets home early.

Richard stepped out of the taxi and into the reception of the nice hotel he was staying in, then he stopped in his tracks. Asleep in one of the big comfy chairs, long legs splayed out, arms crossed over his chest and head tilted to the side, was Jared.

* * *

 **2004**  
Richard Hendricks woke up with a very fuzzy head and weird, half-memories of the past two weeks. What the fuck? Had finals stress given him concussion? He scratched his head, yawned. His room was suspiciously neat. God damn it, his fucking mom had been coming in without his permission again. She was getting the silent treatment over breakfast. He saw a note in his handwriting that said CALL BIG HEAD on his closet, found his rad Nokia and flopped back into bed, calling him up. "Hey, dude." Big Head was weirdly tetchy at first, but whatever he was mad about seemed to be quickly forgotten. Bless Big Head and his inability to hold a grudge. They made plans Richard would come over to his place later, have dinner there and play the hell out of some Counter-Strike. He hung up, wondered if Big Head’s mom would wear that red low cut blouse again, and his hand snaked down into his briefs.

A hundred miles away, in McKing, a boy named Donald quietly packed his meagre belongings into a backpack and set off for the bus station with enough money for a one way ticket to New Orleans in his pocket. He'd turn eighteen in two weeks.

 **2006**  
Richard was accepted into Stanford, and couldn't be happier. So was Big Head, which was... kind of befuddling, but it was still great. They could get out of Tulsa, together!

In New Orleans, Donald, having worked in a variety of retail and service jobs and also taken out some pretty serious loans, received confirmation he was accepted into Vassar University. He celebrated alone, happy tears running down his face, with a never-used tea bag.

 **2008**  
Richard hated Stanford.

Donald loved Vassar.

 **2009**  
Richard dropped out of Stanford, moved into this dude Erlich's place. An aptitude test at Hooli granted him a low level coding gig, which should tide him over until he got his great idea. He was young, hungry and creative, how long could it possibly take?

 **2010**  
Bored and just weeks shy of his degree, Big Head dropped out too, and moved in with Richard in Erlich's bungalow. So did a dude named Gilfoyle, who immediately set about antagonizing another incubee, Dinesh Chugtai.

Donald graduated with honors and started working for Nancy Pelosi's midterm reelection campaign, which he was proud to say was a success, even if the Dems suffered a setback overall. Working the campaign, he fell in love for the second time in his life.

 **2012**  
No longer in love and after a successful stint with Google, Donald applied for a position with tech giant Hooli. Excited about being given the chance to work with Gavin Belson himself, he was determined to make as good an impression as possible. Which is why he neither protested when Gavin kept referring to him as "Jared", or let his heart-hammering shock show beyond a paleing he had no control over.

A few buildings away, Richard was boredly reviewing blocks of code, occasionally taking a break to sketch a little logo of a flute player. Big Head, in the same open landscape, was playing Minesweeper. The smallest one.

When he got home that day, Donald - now Jared - reached up into one of his closets and pulled out a shoe box, carefully opened it and rifled through the old mementoes. His old walkman. The 7" single pawpaw had given him. Richard's cassette. Those weeks that summer had seemed like a dream, like a fantasy of a teenage romance he'd yearned for so bad, which ended so unlikely there was no way it could actually have happened. In the following years he'd mostly convinced himself it hadn't actually happened, or at least not happened like he remembered. He brought the cassette and walkman to his bed in his new condo, laid down on it. He'd never actually listened to it, he was a little afraid of it honestly. But he'd listen now. The music was good, 90s alternative rock with sensitive vocals. But most of all it flushed him with memories. Richard smiling at him, Richard introducing him to his grandfather, Richard singing in the car. He read the hand-written names of the songs on the little inlay while he listened. The last song on side B was called No Surprises and it was very, very beautiful. The final notes played out and Jared sighed, closed his eyes, listened to the static.

Then an intimately familiar voice came through.

_Uh, Donald, it's me, uh Richard. Ummm. I just wanted to say. I never meant to like, hurt you? I'm so fucking sorry, I'm such an idiot. And uh- like- I have no idea what's even going to happen, if I'll make it home, if I haven't just like fucked the entire timeline and I'll never see you again but uh, if I do see you again, and things work out, like uh... we'll never be apart again. Like, the only reason I'm leaving you is so I can be with you, and I know that makes no fucking sense, but fuck. I love you more than I've ever loved anyone. Okay that's what I wanted to say. Bye._

Jared turned to hug his pillow into his face and sobbed.

 **2013**  
Richard hated working at Hooli.

Jared hated working at Hooli.

 **2014**  
While the cassette incident had rattled him a little, Jared Dunn was very good at compartmentalizing, and had done a pretty good job at forgetting all about Richard Hendricks again. Then one day he saw a bunch of programmers huddled around a laptop looking at a Github project, which he immediately recognized had huge potential. He noted the creator's username and looked it up in the privacy of his office. He clicked on his little profile and nearly fell off his chair when he saw the creator's full name.

Excitedly, he pitched Gavin, and held it together like a pro when he called the number in Richard Hendricks' personell file.

 _"Hello, Richard Hendricks, I’m a total fucking retard,"_ Richard answered.

He still swore a lot, Jared thought.

He prepared himself for when Richard would come into their meeting. He was not going to be shaken. This was all - incredibly weird, something out of The Twilight Zone, but Jared Dunn had had a weird fucking life and he did not believe in manifest destiny. In fact, he was looking forward to meeting him, maybe it would act as closure to one of the strangest little chapters of his life.

He walked in, and Jared immediately recognized him. Taller, a less wild haircut, he looked shyer, couldn't hold eye contact. Didn't reveal a single sign of recognizing Jared. But. He was still the most beautiful thing Jared had seen in his life.

Then.

He turned down ten million dollars. He walked away from Gavin Belson. He did everything Jared had ever dreamed of doing. He did it with the same mix of recklessness and certainty as when he'd danced with Jared at prom ten years earlier. As when he'd smiled at him that first day in class and walked straight for him. Jared had been rejected more than any living human really should have to deal with. Richard had been the first person that chose him over anybody else.

Having sent off an e-mail tendering his resignation, and bought a nice, domestic wine, Jared trepidatiously walked up the driveway to the address listed in Richard's personell file.

In the years that followed, while Jared had hoped a romantic relationship with Richard would develop but never did, he could still honestly say he was happier than he'd ever been in his life. Even happier than he'd been at Vassar, which had truly been glory days. He had friends which were good as family. He was working somewhere meaningful. He got to spend every day with someone he loved so much just hearing him say his name could send goosebumps up his arms. And life was just - exciting. Then one day, Richard, now in his early thirties and head of a billion dollar-valued coorporation, asked Jared if he'd ever heard of something called a Fermionic Stabilizer.

"Yes," Jared said, staring. "you mentioned it to me, once."

"Great, uh, cool. Well, they contacted me with a pretty awesome offer. Come on, come in my office, we need to talk about this."

He'd begged Richard to come along to Switzerland for the implementation of the Pied Piper tech. Richard had said no.

Jared usually did what Richard told him, but this time he quietly bought a ticket for Zürich and a train ticket for Chur and told Dinesh he was in charge.

* * *

"Jared," Richard said, walking over quickly.

"Uhm?" Jared said, waking up. Then he smiled a big, warm, tired smile, and rubbed his eyes. "Oh! Richard! I'm sorry, I know you said you wanted me to- oh!"

He fumblingly reached out his arms to support Richard, who had climbed on top of him on the big hotel chair, taken his face in both hands and kissed him. Jared kissed back, helplessly.

Someone cleared their throat. "Excuse me, gentlemen?"

Richard turned, still straddling Jared. A smartly clad receptionist had appeared.

"Sorry to interrupt, but are you guests at this hotel?"

"Uhh uh, yeah, uh, room 509. Hendricks."

"If it's not too much trouble, might I suggest you take this to your room?"

"Um sure uh sorry"

The receptionist stepped away for a second and returned with Richard's key. He accepted it, smiled sheepishly. In the elevator Jared leaned down and Richard hugged him close, felt his breath on his neck.

"Okay," he said in a thin voice. "I just need to like, verify a thing."

"What?"

"Uhh... I've been from Tucson to Tucumcari..."

Jared laughed and responded in a quivering voice. "Tehachapi to Tonapah."

"Fuck." Richard pulled back. "It really was real, all of it?"

Jared nodded, then pulled an old cassette out of his jacket pocket, which said RADIOHEAD MIXTAPE FOR DONALD on the spine in Richard's handwriting. Richard grinned.

"You listened to it!"

"It took me a while, but yeah, I did."

"Did- uh did you like it?"

Jared nodded, smiled. “They’re very good! Maybe not Linda Ronstadt good, but good.”

Richard locked them into his room, wondered which question to ask first. Then Jared turned him around with firm gentle hands and kissed him again, and Richard figured it could wait.

A little while later Richard was lying on his back, slightly overwhelmed and very naked, and Jared was pressing smug, smiling kisses into his neck, an arm slung lazily over his chest. He turned and shifted and kissed Jared's mouth.

"Uh. Okay. I need to know. What happened? At the power plant?"

"Your machine blew up."

"Fuck! What? Were you hurt?"

"No, I'm a fast runner. I was already by the fence when I heard it. I ran back, expected you to have blown up too, but there wasn't trace of you. And it wasn't like- it wasn't like a Hollywood explosion, it was just charred and useless. I was going to take it to the dump like you asked me to but then I heard guards approaching, panicked and ran away."

"Jesus."

"I went to your car, like you said. I still wasn't sure it was all real and not an elaborate prank. I waited for you an hour. Then I drove to Tulsa and parked the Dodge near the bus station, like you wanted, then I took the bus back to McKing. I left for New Orleans the next day."

"Were you like- I mean- were you like- okay?"

Jared nodded slowly. "It was a lot to digest, but I'd dealt with weird things before. In fact... I think... well, Richard- you did show me some- you showed me I could have a friend." He smiled a little tremulously. "You showed me I could be loved. Those- those were important lessons."

Richard reached out a hand, carded it through Jared's hair. "When we met again..."

"I knew, yes. But- I don't know, Richard. If it had been Big Head or Dinesh who told Gavin to stick his ten million it would have been them I'd asked for a job. I'm not going to pretend I didn't want this to happen, but it wasn't why I stuck around. I've loved getting to know you and watching Pied Piper grow. These past years have been so wonderful."

"I love you," Richard said in a thin voice. "sorry it took me so fucking long and an unprecedented quantum physical event to work it out."

Jared grinned. "I love you too," he said, and then they kissed again.

* * *

"There was a time I told myself I'd never return to Oklahoma," Jared said.

Richard reached out, grabbed his hand. It was pretty chilly, the houses were decked out in lights. It was Christmas. "Come on."

"Ah, I'm nervous."

"Why are you nervous, you've already met my parents. They like you."

"Yeah but- that was- as your co-worker, not-"

"My boyfriend?

"Um-"

"My mom literally said, oh honey I already knew, I saw it on Reddit, I was just waiting for you to tell me. Can you fucking believe my own mom would believe fucking internet gossip rather than just ask me?" Richard rolled his eyes and scowled and for a moment he looked so adolescent it might as well be 2004 again. But it wasn't. It was 2020, Jared was spending Christmas with Richard and his family, and then the door to Richard's parents house opened and both his mom and dad came out, and his mom opened her arms wide.

**Author's Note:**

> Stole some Reagan-bashing from [this iconic blog post](http://www.thepaincomics.com/weekly040609a.htm).


End file.
